Annouchka: A Tale

"Suppose we join them," Annouchka said to me, listening to the chants that came to us growing fainter and fainter by degrees.

"You are then very religious?"

"One should go to some place very far away for devotion, or to accomplish a perilous work!" she added. "Otherwise the days slip by – life passes uselessly."

"You are ambitious," I said to her. "You do not wish to end your life without leaving behind some traces of your existence?"

"Is it then impossible?"

"Impossible!" I was going to answer; but I looked at the eyes that shone with ardor, and confined myself to saying, "Try!"

"Tell me," after a moment's silence, during which indescribable shades passed over her countenance, which again had become pale. "Then that lady pleases you very much? You know, the one whose health my brother drank at the ruins the day after you met us?"

I began to laugh.

"Your brother but jested; no woman was in my mind, or at least is there now."

"And what is it that you like about women?" she asked, turning her head with a childlike curiosity.

"What a singular question!" I cried.

Annouchka was immediately troubled.

"I shouldn't have asked you such a question, should I? Forgive me; I am accustomed to say whatever comes into my head. That is why I am afraid to speak."

"Speak, I beg you! Fear nothing, I am so delighted at seeing you less wild."

Annouchka lowered her eyes, and for the first time I heard a sweet low laugh come from her lips.

"Come, tell me about your trip," she said, arranging the folds of her dress over her knees, as if to install herself there for a long time; "begin or recite something to me, that which you read from Onéguine."[4 - Poem of Pouchkina.]

She suddenly became pensive, and murmured in a low voice, —

"Où sont aujourd'hui la croix et l'ombrage
Qui marquaient la tombe de ma pauvre mère."

"That's not exactly the way that Pouchkina[5 - Instead of "mère," the Russian text says "nourrice."] expressed himself," I said.

"I should like to be Tatiana,"[6 - Heroine of the poem.] continued she, still pensive. "Come, speak," she said with vivacity.

But that was far from my thoughts. I looked at her; inundated by the warm light of the sun, she seemed to me so calm, so serene. – About us, at our feet, above our heads, the country, the river, the heavens, – all were radiant; the air seemed to me quite saturated with splendor.

"See, how beautiful it is," I said, lowering my voice involuntarily.

"Oh, yes, very beautiful," she replied in the same tone, without looking at me. "If you and I were birds, how we would dart forth into space – into all that infinite blue! But we are not birds."

"Yes, but we can bring forth wings."

"How's that?"

"Life will teach you. There are many feelings that will raise you above this earth; never fear, the wings will come to you."

"Have you had any?"

"What shall I say? I don't think that I have taken wing so far."

Annouchka became thoughtful once more. I was leaning over her.

"Can you waltz?" she said to me suddenly.

"Yes," I replied, a little surprised at the question.

"Then come quickly; come. I am going to beg my brother to play us a waltz. We will pretend that the wings have appeared, and that we are flying into space."

She ran towards the house. I quickly followed her, and a few moments had hardly elapsed before we were whirling about the narrow room, to the sounds of a waltz of Lanner's. Annouchka danced with much grace and animation. I do not know what womanly charm suddenly appeared upon her girlish face. Long afterwards the charm of her slender figure still lingered about my hand; for a long time I felt her quick breathing near me, and I dreamed of her dark eyes, motionless and half closed, with her face animated, though pale, about which waved the curls of her sweet hair.

X

Nothing could have been more delightful than that day. We amused ourselves like children. Annouchka was pleasing and artless. Gaguine regarded her with pleasure. I left them a little later. When I reached the middle of the Rhine I begged the boatman to let his boat drift down the river. The old man rested on his oars, and the majestic river carried us along. I looked about me, listened, and dreamed. Suddenly I felt a weight at my heart. Astonished, I raised my eyes to the heavens, but found no quiet there. Studded with stars, the entire heavens seemed to be moving, palpitating, trembling; I leaned towards the river, but down there in those cold and dark depths, there, too, were the stars trembling and moving. Everything appeared incited by a restless agitation, and my own trouble only increased it. I leaned upon the edge of the boat. The sighing of the wind in my ears, the rippling of the water, which made a wake behind the stern, irritated me, and the cold air from over the water did not refresh me. A nightingale began to sing near the river bank, and the sweetness of the melodious voice ran through me like a delicious and burning poison. But they were not tears from an excitement without cause; what I felt was not the confused emotion of vague desires, – it was not that effervescence of the soul which wished to clasp everything in its embrace, because it could understand and love everything that exists; no, the thirst for happiness was kindled in me. I did not yet venture to put it into words – but happiness, happiness to satiety – that was what I wished, what I longed for. Meanwhile, the boat kept on down the stream, and the old boatman dozed on his oars.

XI

While going the next morning to Gaguine's, I did not ask myself if I was in love with Annouchka, but did not cease to dream of her, to ponder on her fate; I rejoiced in our unforeseen reconciliation. I felt that I had not understood her until the previous evening; up to that time she was an enigma. Now, at length, she was revealed to me; in what an entrancing light was her image enshrouded, how new she was to me, and what did she not promise!

I followed deliberately the road that I had gone over so many times, glancing at every step at the little white house that was seen in the distance. I thought not of the far-off future; I did not even give a thought to the next day; I was happy.

When I entered the room Annouchka blushed. I noticed that she had again dressed herself with care, but by the expression of her face she was not entirely at her ease, and I – I was happy. I even thought I noticed a movement to run away, as usual, but, making an effort, she remained. Gaguine was in that particular state of excitement which, like a fit of madness, suddenly takes hold of the dilettanti, when they imagine that they have caught Nature in the act and can hold her.

He was standing, quite dishevelled and covered with paint, before his canvas, bestowing upon it, right and left, great strokes of his brush.

He greeted me with a nod that had something quite fierce about it, going back a few steps, half closing his eyes, then again dashing at his picture. I did not disturb him, but went and sat by Annouchka. Her dark eyes turned slowly towards me.

"You are not the same to-day as you were yesterday," I said, after vainly trying to smile.

"It is true, I am not the same," she replied in a slow and dull voice; "but that's nothing. I have not slept well. I was thinking all night long."

"Upon what?"

"Ah, mon Dieu, upon a great many things. It is a habit of my childhood, of the time that I still lived with my mother."

She spoke this last word with an effort, but repeated it again: —

"When I lived with my mother I often asked myself why no one knew what would happen to them, and why, when foreseeing a misfortune, one cannot avoid it. And why also can one not tell the whole truth. I was thinking moreover last night that I ought to study, that I know nothing; I need a new education. I have been badly brought up. I have neither learned to draw nor to play upon the piano; I hardly know how to sew. I have no talent, people must be very much bored with me."

"You are unjust to yourself," I replied to her; "you have read a great deal, and with your intelligence" —

"And I am intelligent?" she asked, with such a curious naïve air that I could hardly keep from laughing.

"Am I intelligent, brother?" she asked of Gaguine.