Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Read online

  Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories

  Иван Тургенев

  The Novels Of Ivan Turgenev KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK And Other Stories

  Translated From The Russian

  By

  Constance Garnett

  CONTENTS

  KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

  THE INN

  LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV'S STORY

  THE DOG

  THE WATCH

  KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

  A STUDY

  I

  We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr

  Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the

  marrow of his bones) began as follows:

  I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to

  me in the 'thirties ... forty years ago as you see. I will be

  brief--and don't you interrupt me.

  I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only just left the

  University. My brother was a lieutenant in the horse-guard artillery.

  His battery was stationed at Krasnoe Selo--it was summer time. My

  brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the

  neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the

  acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent

  cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was

  Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.

  Marlinsky is out of date now--no one reads him--and even his name is

  jeered at; but in the 'thirties his fame was above everyone's--and in

  the opinion of the young people of the day Pushkin could not hold

  candle to him. He not only enjoyed the reputation of being the

  foremost Russian writer; but--something much more difficult and more

  rarely met with--he did to some extent leave his mark on his

  generation. One came across heroes à la Marlinsky everywhere,

  especially in the provinces and especially among infantry and

  artillery men; they talked and corresponded in his language; behaved

  with gloomy reserve in society--"with tempest in the soul and flame in

  the blood" like Lieutenant Byelosov in the "Frigate Hope."

  Women's hearts were "devoured" by them. The adjective applied to them

  in those days was "fatal." The type, as we all know, survived for many

  years, to the days of Petchorin. [Footnote: The leading character in

  Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time.--Translator's Note.] All

  sorts of elements were mingled in that type. Byronism, romanticism,

  reminiscences of the French Revolution, of the Dekabrists--and the

  worship of Napoleon; faith in destiny, in one's star, in strength of

  will; pose and fine phrases--and a miserable sense of the emptiness of

  life; uneasy pangs of petty vanity--and genuine strength and daring;

  generous impulses--and defective education, ignorance; aristocratic

  airs--and delight in trivial foppery.... But enough of these general

  reflections. I promised to tell you the story.

  II

  Lieutenant Tyeglev belonged precisely to the class of those "fatal"

  individuals, though he did not possess the exterior commonly

  associated with them; he was not, for instance, in the least like

  Lermontov's "fatalist." He was a man of medium height, fairly solid

  and round-shouldered, with fair, almost white eyebrows and eyelashes;

  he had a round, fresh, rosy-cheeked face, a turn-up nose, a low

  forehead with the hair growing thick over the temples, and full,

  well-shaped, always immobile lips: he never laughed, never even smiled.

  Only when he was tired and out of heart he showed his square teeth,

  white as sugar. The same artificial immobility was imprinted on all his

  features: had it not been for that, they would have had a good-natured

  expression. His small green eyes with yellow lashes were the

  only thing not quite ordinary in his face: his right eye was very

  slightly higher than his left and the left eyelid drooped a little,

  which made his eyes look different, strange and drowsy. Tyeglev's

  countenance, which was not, however, without a certain attractiveness,

  almost always wore an expression of discontent mingled with

  perplexity, as though he were chasing within himself a gloomy thought

  which he was never able to catch. At the same time he did not give one

  the impression of being stuck up: he might rather have been taken for

  an aggrieved than a haughty man. He spoke very little, hesitatingly,

  in a husky voice, with unnecessary repetitions. Unlike most

  "fatalists," he did not use particularly elaborate expressions in

  speaking and only had recourse to them in writing; his handwriting was

  quite like a child's. His superiors regarded him as an officer of no

  great merit--not particularly capable and not over-zealous. The

  brigadier-general, a man of German extraction, used to say of him: "He

  has punctuality but not precision." With the soldiers, too, Tyeglev

  had the character of being neither one thing nor the other. He lived

  modestly, in accordance with his means. He had been left an orphan at

  nine years old: his father and mother were drowned when they were

  being ferried across the Oka in the spring floods. He had been

  educated at a private school, where he had the reputation of being one

  of the slowest and quietest of the boys, and at his own earnest desire

  and through the good offices of a cousin who was a man of influence,

  he obtained a commission in the horse-guards artillery; and, though

  with some difficulty, passed his examination first as an ensign and

  then as a second lieutenant. His relations with other officers were

  somewhat strained. He was not liked, was rarely visited--and he

  hardly went to see anyone. He felt the presence of strangers a

  constraint; he instantly became awkward and unnatural ... he had no

  instinct for comradeship and was not on really intimate terms with

  anyone. But he was respected, and respected not for his character nor

  for his intelligence and education--but because the stamp which

  distinguishes "fatal" people was discerned in him. No one of his

  fellow officers expected that Tyeglev would make a career or

  distinguish himself in any way; but that Tyeglev might do something

  extraordinary or that Tyeglev might become a Napoleon was not

  considered impossible. For that is a matter of a man's "star"--and he

  was regarded as a "man of destiny," just as there are "men of sighs"

  and "of tears."

  III

  Two incidents that marked the first steps in his career did a great

  deal to strengthen his "fatal" reputation. On the very first day after

  receiving his commission--about the middle of March--he was walking

  with other newly promoted officers in full dress uniform along the

  embankment. The spring had come early that year, the Neva was melting;

  the bigger blocks of ice had gone but the whole river was choked up

  with a dense mass of thawing icicles. Th
e young men were talking and

  laughing ... suddenly one of them stopped: he saw a little dog some

  twenty paces from the bank on the slowly moving surface of the river.

  Perched on a projecting piece of ice it was whining and trembling all

  over. "It will be drowned," said the officer through his teeth. The

  dog was slowly being carried past one of the sloping gangways that led

  down to the river. All at once Tyeglev without saying a word ran down

  this gangway and over the thin ice, sinking in and leaping out again,

  reached the dog, seized it by the scruff of the neck and getting

  safely back to the bank, put it down on the pavement. The danger to

  which Tyeglev had exposed himself was so great, his action was so

  unexpected, that his companions were dumbfoundered--and only spoke all

  at once, when he had called a cab to drive home: his uniform was wet

  all over. In response to their exclamations, Tyeglev replied coolly

  that there was no escaping one's destiny--and told the cabman to drive

  on.

  "You might at least take the dog with you as a souvenir," cried one of

  the officers. But Tyeglev merely waved his hand, and his comrades

  looked at each other in silent amazement.

  The second incident occurred a few days later, at a card party at the

  battery commander's. Tyeglev sat in the corner and took no part in the

  play. "Oh, if only I had a grandmother to tell me beforehand what

  cards will win, as in Pushkin's Queen of Spades," cried a

  lieutenant whose losses had nearly reached three thousand. Tyeglev

  approached the table in silence, took up a pack, cut it, and saying

  "the six of diamonds," turned the pack up: the six of diamonds was the

  bottom card. "The ace of clubs!" he said and cut again: the bottom

  card turned out to be the ace of clubs. "The king of diamonds!" he

  said for the third time in an angry whisper through his clenched

  teeth--and he was right the third time, too ... and he suddenly turned

  crimson. He probably had not expected it himself. "A capital trick! Do

  it again," observed the commanding officer of the battery. "I don't go

  in for tricks," Tyeglev answered drily and walked into the other room.

  How it happened that he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to

  explain: but I saw it with my own eyes. Many of the players present

  tried to do the same--and not one of them succeeded: one or two did

  guess one card but never two in succession. And Tyeglev had

  guessed three! This incident strengthened still further his reputation

  as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often occurred to me since

  that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the cards, there is no

  knowing what turn it would have taken and how he would have looked at

  himself; but this unexpected success clinched the matter.

  IV

  It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation. It

  gave him a special significance, a special colour ... "Cela le

  posait," as the French express it--and with his limited

  intelligence, scanty education and immense vanity, such a reputation

  just suited him. It was difficult to acquire it but to keep it up cost

  nothing: he had only to remain silent and hold himself aloof. But it

  was not owing to this reputation that I made friends with Tyeglev and,

  I may say, grew fond of him. I liked him in the first place because I

  was rather an unsociable creature myself--and saw in him one of my own

  sort, and secondly, because he was a very good-natured fellow and in

  reality, very simple-hearted. He aroused in me a feeling of something

  like compassion; it seemed to me that apart from his affected

  "fatality," he really was weighed down by a tragic fate which he did

  not himself suspect. I need hardly say I did not express this feeling

  to him: could anything be more insulting to a "fatal" hero than to be

  an object of pity? And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me;

  with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk--in my presence he

  ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed

  either by his own efforts or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as

  he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there

  was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look

  down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him;

  the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress

  his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even

  chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his

  chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not

  only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself

  to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in

  presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days,

  in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious

  significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain

  "climacteric" years which someone had mentioned in his presence and

  the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. "Fatal"

  men of the true stamp ought not to betray such beliefs: they ought to

  inspire them in others.... But I was the only one who knew Tyeglev on

  that side.

  V

  One day--I remember it was St. Elijah's day, July 20th--I came to stay

  with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off

  for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I

  sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and

  spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn

  where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had

  a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes

  and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar

  who used to hang about the battery selling "fi-ine oranges and

  lemons," a charming and lively person who in addition to other talents

  could play the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he

  cherished in his young days for the daughter of a policeman. Now that

  he was older, this Don Juan in a gay cotton shirt had no experience of

  unsuccessful love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a

  wide plain gradually sloping away in the distance; a little river

  gleamed here and there in the winding hollows; low growing woods could

  be seen further on the horizon. Night was coming on and we were left

  alone. As night fell a fine damp mist descended upon the earth, and,

  growing thicker and thicker, passed into a dense fog. The moon rose up

  into the sky; the fog was soaked through and through and, as it were,

  shimmering with golden light. Everything was strangely shifting,

  veiled and confused; the faraway looked near, the near looked far

  away, what was big looked small and what was small looked big ...

  everything became dim and full of light. We seemed to be in fairyland,