Obryv. English Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  Boris's aunt had only just begun to give him an idea of her methods ofconducting the estate when he began to yawn.

  "Listen, these are all your affairs; I am only your Starost," she said.But he could not suppress a yawn, watched the birds, the dragon-flies,picked the cornflowers, looked curiously at the peasants, and gazed upat the sky over-arching the wide horizon. Then his aunt began to talk toone of the peasants, and he hurried off to the garden, ran down to theedge of the precipice, and made his way through the undergrowth to thesteep bank of the Volga.

  "He is still too young, only a child, does not understand seriousmatters," thought his aunt, as she followed him with her eyes. "Whatwill become of him?"

  The Volga glided quietly between its overgrown banks, with here andthere a sandbank or an island thickly covered with bushes. In thedistance lay the sandhills and the darkening forest. Here and thereshimmered a sail; gulls, with an even balancing of their wings, skimmedthe water, and then rose with a more strenuous movement, while over thegardens, high in the air, the goshawks hovered.

  Boris stood still for a long time, recalling his childhood. Heremembered that he had sat on this spot with his mother, lookingthoughtfully out at this same landscape. Then he went slowly back to thehouse, and climbed the precipice, with the picture of her vividly beforehis mind's eye.

  In Malinovka and the neighbourhood there were tragic memories connectedwith this precipice. In the lifetime of Boris's parents a man wild withjealousy, a tailor from the town, had killed his wife and her loverthere in the midst of the thicket, and had then cut his own throat. Thesuicide had been buried on the spot where he had committed the crime.Among the common people, as always happens in cases of this sort, therewere rumours that the murderer, all dressed in white, wandered about thewood, climbed the precipice, and looked down on town and village beforehe vanished into air. And for superstitious reasons this part of thegrounds had been left neglected. None of the servants went down theprecipice, and the peasants from the outskirts of the town and fromMalinovka made a detour to avoid it. The fence that divided the Raiskys'park from the woods had long since fallen into disrepair. Pines andbushes of hawthorn and dwarf-cherry had woven themselves together into adense growth in the midst of which was concealed a neglected arbour.

  Boris vividly imagined the scene, how the jealous husband, tremblingwith agitation, stole through the bushes, threw himself on his rival,and struck him with his knife; how the woman flung herself at his feetand begged his forgiveness. But he, with the foam of madness on his lips,struck her again and again, and then, in the presence of the two corpses,cut his own throat. Boris shuddered. Agitated and gloomy he turned fromthe accursed spot. Yet he was attracted by the mysterious darkness ofthe tangled wood to the precipice, to the lovely view over the Volga andits banks.

  He closed his eyes, abandoning himself to the contemplation of thepicture; his thoughts swept over him like the waves of the Volga; thelovely landscape was ever before his eyes, mirrored in his consciousness.

  Veroshka and Marfinka provided him with amusement.

  Veroshka was a little girl of six, with dark, brilliant eyes and darkcomplexion, who was beginning to be serious and to be ashamed of herbaby ways. She would hop, skip and jump, then stand still, look shylyround and walk sedately along; then she would dart on again like a bird,pick a handful of currants and stuff them into her mouth. If Borispatted her hair, she smoothed it rapidly; if he gave her a kiss, shewiped it away. She was self-willed too. When she was sent on an errandshe would shake her head, then run off to do it. She never asked Boristo draw for her, but if Marfinka asked him she watched silently and moreintently than her sister. She did not, like Marfinka, beg eitherdrawings or pencils.

  Marfinka, a rosy little girl of four, was often self-willed, and oftencried, but before the tears were dry she was laughing and shouting again.Veroshka rarely wept, and then quietly. She soon recovered, but she didnot like to be told to beg pardon.

  Boris's aunt wondered, as she saw him gay and serious by turns, whatoccupied his mind; she wondered what he did all day long. In answerBoris showed his sketching folio; then he would play her quadrilles,mazurkas, excerpts from opera, and finally his own improvisations.

  Tatiana Markovna's astonishment remained. "Just like your mother," shesaid. "She was just as restless, always sighing as if she expectedsomething to happen. Then she would begin to play and was gay again. See,Vassilissa, he has sketched you and me, like life! When Tiet Nikonichcomes, hide yourself and make a sketch of him, and next day we will sendit him, and it can hang on the study wall. What a boy you are! And youplay as well as the French emigre who used to live with your Aunt. Onlyit is impossible to talk to you about the farm; you are still tooyoung."

  She always wished to go through the accounts with him. "The accounts forVeroshka and Marfinka are separate, you see," she said. "You need notthink that a penny of your money goes to them. See...."

  But he never listened. He merely watched how his aunt wrote, how shelooked at him over her spectacles, observed the wrinkles in her face,her birthmark, her eyes, her smile, and then burst out laughing, and,throwing himself into her arms, kissed her, and begged to go and look atthe old house. She could refuse him nothing; so she unwillingly gave himthe keys and he went to look at the rooms where he was born and hadspent his childhood, of which he retained only a confused memory.

  "I am going with Cousin Boris," said Marfinka.

  "Where, my darling? It is uncanny over there," said Tatiana Markovna.

  Marfinka was frightened. Veroshka said nothing, but when Boris reachedthe old house, she was already standing at the door, with her hand onthe latch, as if she feared she might be driven away.

  Boris shuddered as he entered the ante-room, and cast an anxious glanceinto the neighbouring hall, supported by pillars. Veroshka had run on infront.

  "Where are you off to, Veroshka?"

  She stood still a moment, her hand on the latch of the nearest door, andhe had only just time to follow her before she vanished. Dark,smoke-stained reception rooms adjoined the hall. In one were two ghostlyfigures of shrouded statues and shrouded candelabra; by the walls wereranged dark stained oak pieces of furniture with brass decorations andinlaid work; there were huge Chinese vases, a clock representing Bacchuswith a barrel, and great oval mirrors in elaborate gilded frames. In thebedroom stood an enormous bed, like a magnificent bier, with a brocadecover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such acatafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted andfaded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carvedcupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened apress and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came fromthe shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered uniformswith big buttons.

  Raisky shivered. "Granny was right!" he laughed. "It is uncanny here."

  "But everything here is so beautiful!" cried Vera, "the great picturesand the books!"

  "Pictures? Books? Where? I don't remember. Bravo, little Veroshka."

  He kissed her. She wiped her lips, and ran on in front to show him thebooks. He found some two thousand volumes, and was soon absorbed inreading the titles; many of the books were still uncut.

  From this time he was not often to be seen in the wooden house. He didnot even go down to the Volga, but devoured one volume after another.Then he wrote verses, read them aloud, and intoxicated himself with thesound of them; then gave all his time to drawing. He expected something,he knew not what, from the future. He was filled with passion, with theforetaste of pleasure; there rose before him a world of wonderful music,marvellous pictures, and the murmur of enchanting life.

  "I have been wanting to ask you," said Tatiana Markovna, "why you haveentered yourself for school again."

  "Not the school, the University!"

  "It's the same thing. You studied at your guardian's, and at the HighSchool, you can draw, play the piano. What more do you want to learn?The s
tudents will only teach you to smoke a pipe, and in the end--whichGod forbid--to drink wine. You should go into the Guards."

  "Uncle says my means are not sufficient...."

  "Not sufficient! What next?" She pointed to the fields and the village.She counted out his resources in hundreds and thousands of roubles. Shehad had no experience of army circles, had never lived in the capital,and did not know how much money was needed.

  "Your means insufficient! Why, I can send provision alone for a wholeregiment. No means! What does your Uncle do with the revenues?"

  "I intend to be an artist, Granny."

  "What! An artist!"

  "When I leave the University, I intend to enter the Academy."

  "What's the matter with you, Borushka? Make the sign of the cross! Doyou want to be a teacher!"

  "All artists are not teachers. Among artists there are great geniuses,who are famous and receive large sums for pictures or music."

  "And do you intend to sell your pictures for money, or to play the pianofor money in the evenings? What a disgrace!"

  "No, Grandmother, an artist...."

  "No, Borushka, don't anger your Grandmother; let her have the joy ofseeing you in your Guard's uniform."

  "Uncle says I ought to go into the Civil Service."

  "A clerk! Good heavens! To stoop over a desk all day, bathed in ink, runin and out of the courts! Who would marry you then? No, no; come home tome as an officer, and marry a rich woman!"

  Although Boris shared neither his uncle's nor his aunt's views, yet fora moment there shimmered before his eyes a vision of his own figure in ahussar's or a court uniform. He saw how well he sat his horse, how wellhe danced. That day he made a sketch of himself, negligently seated inthe saddle, with a cloak over his shoulders.