Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev

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One day I came home by a side lane which I usually avoided as the
house in which my enemy Trankvillitatin lodged was in it; but on this
occasion Fate itself led me that way. Passing the open window of an
eating-house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a
young man of free and easy manners, "a lazy fellow and a scamp," as my
father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which
he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine.

"And what do you suppose they've been up to?" said Vassily, whom I
could not see but heard distinctly; he was, most likely, sitting close
by, near the window with a companion over the steaming tea--and as
often happens with people in a closed room, spoke in a loud voice
without suspecting that anyone passing in the street could hear every
word: "They buried it in the ground!"

"Nonsense!" muttered another voice.

"I tell you they did, our young gentlemen are extraordinary!
Especially that Davidka, he's a regular Aesop! I got up at daybreak
and went to the window.... I looked out and, what do you think! Our
two little dears were coming along the orchard bringing that same
watch and they dug a hole under the apple-tree and there they buried
it, as though it had been a baby! And they smoothed the earth over
afterwards, upon my soul they did, the young rakes!"

"Ah! plague take them," Vassily's companion commented. "Too well off,
I suppose. Well, did you dig up the watch?"

"To be sure I did. I have got it now. Only it won't do to show it for
a time. There's been no end of a fuss over it. Davidka stole it that
very night from under our old lady's back."

"Oh--oh!"

"I tell you, he did. He's a desperate fellow. So it won't do to show
it. But when the officers come down I shall sell it or stake it at
cards."

I didn't stay to hear more: I rushed headlong home and straight to
David.

"Brother!" I began, "brother, forgive me! I have wronged you! I
suspected you! I blamed you! You see how agitated I am! Forgive me!"

"What's the matter with you?" asked David. "Explain!"

"I suspected that you had dug up our watch under the apple-tree."

"The watch again! Why, isn't it there?"

"It's not there; I thought you had taken it, to help your friends. And
it was all Vassily."

I repeated to David all that I had overheard under the window of the
eating-house.

But how to describe my amazement! I had, of course, expected David to
be indignant, but I had not for a moment anticipated the effect it
produced on him! I had hardly finished my story when he flew into an
indescribable fury! David, who had always taken up a scornful attitude
to the whole "vulgar," as he called it, business of the watch; David,
who had more than once declared that it wasn't worth a rotten egg,
jumped up from his seat, got hot all over, ground his teeth and
clenched his fists. "We can't let this pass!" he said at last; "how
dare he take someone else's property? Wait a bit, I'll show him. I
won't let thieves off so easily!"

I confess I don't understand to this day what can have so infuriated
David. Whether he had been irritated before and Vassily's action had
simply poured oil on the flames, or whether my suspicions had wounded
him, I cannot say, but I had never seen him in such excitement. I
stood before him with my mouth open merely wondering how it was that
his breathing was so hard and laboured.

"What do you intend to do?" I asked at last.

"You shall see after dinner, when your father lies down. I'll find
this scoffer, I'll talk to him."

"Well," thought I, "I should not care to be in that scoffer's shoes!
What will happen? Merciful heavens?"

XVII.

This is what did happen:

As soon as that drowsy, stifling stillness prevailed, which to this
day lies like a feather bed on the Russian household and the Russian
people in the middle of the day after dinner is eaten, David went to
the servants' rooms (I followed on his heels with a sinking heart) and
called Vassily out. The latter was at first unwilling to come, but
ended by obeying and following us into the garden.

David stood close in front of him. Vassily was a whole head taller.

"Vassily Terentyev," my comrade began in a firm voice, "six weeks ago
you took from under this very apple-tree the watch we hid there. You
had no right to do so; it does not belong to you. Give it back at
once!"

Vassily was taken aback, but at once recovered himself.

"What watch? What are you talking about? God bless you! I have no
watch!"

"I know what I am saying and don't tell lies. You've got the watch,
give it back."

"I've not got your watch."

"Then how was it that in the eating-house, you ..." I began, but David
stopped me.

"Vassily Terentyev!" he pronounced in a hollow, threatening voice, "we
know for a fact that you have the watch. You are told honourably to
give it back and if you don't ..."

Vassily sniggered insolently.

"Then what will you do with me then? Eh?"

"What will we do? We will both fight with you till you beat us or we
beat you."

Vassily laughed.

"Fight? That's not for a gentleman! To fight with a servant!"

David suddenly caught hold of Vassily's waistcoat.

"But we are not going to fight you with our fists," he articulated,
grinding his teeth. "Understand that! I'll give you a knife and take
one myself.... And then we shall see who does for which? Alexey!" he
began commanding me, "run for my big knife, you know the one with the
bone handle--it's lying on the table and the other's in my pocket."

Vassily positively collapsed. David stood holding him by the
waistcoat.

"Mercy on us! ... Mercy on us, David Yegoritch!" he muttered; tears
actually came into his eyes. "What do you mean, what are you saying?
Let me go."

"I won't let you go. And we shall have no mercy on you! If you get
away from us today, we shall begin again to-morrow. Alyoshka, where's
the knife?"

"David Yegoritch," wailed Vassily, "don't commit murder.... What are
you doing! The watch ... I certainly ... I was joking. I'll give it to
you this minute. What a thing, to be sure! First you are going to slit
Hrisanf Lukitch's belly, then mine. Let me go, David Yegoritch....
Kindly take the watch. Only don't tell your papa."

David let go his hold of Vassily's waistcoat. I looked into his face:
certainly not only Vassily might have been frightened by it. It looked
so weary ... and cold ... and angry....

Vassily dashed into the house and promptly returned with the watch in
his hand. He gave it to David without a word and only on going back
into the house exclaimed aloud in the doorway:

"Tfoo! here's a go."

He still looked panic-stricken. David tossed his head and walked into
our room. Again I followed on his heels. "A Suvorov! He's a regular
Suvorov!" I thought to myself. In those days, in 1801, Suvorov was
our great national hero.

XVIII

David shut the door after him, put the watch on the table, folded his
arms and--oh, wonder!--laughed. Looking at him I laughed, too.

"What a wonderful performance!" he began. "We can't get rid of this
watch anyway. It's bewitched, really. And why was I so furious about
it?"

"Yes, why?" I repeated. "You ought to have let Vassily keep it...."

"Well, no," interposed David. "That's nonsense. But what are we to do
with it?"

"Yes! what?"

We both stared at the watch and pondered. Adorned with a chain of pale
blue beads (the luckless Vassily in his haste had not removed this
chain which belonged to him) it was calmly doing its work: ticking
somewhat irregularly, it is true, and slowly moving its copper minute
hand.

"Shall we bury it again? Or put it in the stove," I suggested at last.
"Or, I tell you what: shouldn't we take it to Latkin?"

"No," answered David. "That's not the thing. I know what: they have
set up a committee at the governor's office and are collecting
subscriptions for the benefit of the people of Kasimov. The town has
been burnt to ashes with all its churches. And I am told they take
anything, not only bread and money, but all sorts of things. Shall we
send the watch there?"

"Yes! yes!" I answered. "A splendid idea. But I thought that since
your friends are in want...."

"No, no; to the committee; the Latkins will manage without it. To the
committee."

"Well, if it is to be the committee, let it be. Only, I imagine, we
must write something to the governor."

David glanced at me. "Do you think so?"

"Yes, of course; there is no need to write much. But just a few
words."

"For instance?"

"For instance ... begin like this: 'Being' ... or better: 'Moved
by' ..."

"'Moved by' ... very good."

"Then we must say: 'herewith our mite' ..."

"'Mite' ... that's good, too. Well, take your pen, sit down and write,
fire away!"

"First I must make a rough copy," I observed.

"All right, a rough copy, only write, write.... And meanwhile I will
clean it with some whitening."

I took a sheet of paper, mended a pen, but before I had time to write
at the top of the sheet "To His Excellency, the illustrious Prince"
(our governer was at that time Prince X), I stopped, struck by the
extraordinary uproar ... which had suddenly arisen in the house. David
noticed the hubbub, too, and he, too, stopped, holding the watch in
his left hand and a rag with whitening in his right. We looked at each
other. What was that shrill cry. It was my aunt shrieking ... and
that? It was my father's voice, hoarse with anger. "The watch! the
watch!" bawled someone, surely Trankvillitatin. We heard the thud of
feet, the creak of the floor, a regular rabble running ... moving
straight upon us. I was numb with terror and David was as white as
chalk, but he looked proud as an eagle. "Vassily, the scoundrel, has
betrayed us," he whispered through his teeth. The door was flung wide
open, and my father in his dressing gown and without his cravat, my
aunt in her dressing jacket, Trankvillitatin, Vassily, Yushka, another
boy, and the cook, Agapit--all burst into the room.

"Scoundrels!" shouted my father, gasping for breath.... "At last we
have found you out!" And seeing the watch in David's hands: "Give it
here!" yelled my father, "give me the watch!"

But David, without uttering a word, dashed to the open window and
leapt out of it into the yard and then off into the street.

Accustomed to imitate my paragon in everything, I jumped out, too, and
ran after David....

"Catch them! Hold them!" we heard a medley of frantic shouts behind
us.

But we were already racing along the street bareheaded, David in
advance and I a few paces behind him, and behind us the clatter and
uproar of pursuit.

XIX

Many years have passed since the date of these events; I have
reflected over them more than once--and to this day I can no more
understand the cause of the fury that took possession of my father
(who had so lately been so sick of the watch that he had forbidden it
to be mentioned in his hearing) than I can David's rage at its having
been stolen by Vassily! One is tempted to imagine that there was some
mysterious power connected with it. Vassily had not betrayed us as
David assumed--he was not capable of it: he had been too much
scared--it was simply that one of our maids had seen the watch in his
hands and had promptly informed our aunt. The fat was in the fire!

And so we darted down the street, keeping to the very middle of it.
The passers-by who met us stopped or stepped aside in amazement. I
remember a retired major craned out of the window of his flat--and,
crimson in the face, his bulky person almost overbalancing, hallooed
furiously. Shouts of "Stop! hold them" still resounded behind us.

David ran flourishing the watch over his head and from time to time
leaping into the air; I jumped, too, whenever he did.

"Where?" I shouted to David, seeing that he was turning into a side
street--and I turned after him.

"To the Oka!" he shouted. "To throw it into the water, into the river.
To the devil!"

"Stop! stop!" they shouted behind.

But we were already flying along the side street, already a whiff of
cool air was meeting us--and the river lay before us, and the steep
muddy descent to it, and the wooden bridge with a train of waggons
stretching across it, and a garrison soldier with a pike beside the
flagstaff; soldiers used to carry pikes in those days. David reached
the bridge and darted by the soldier who tried to give him a blow on
the legs with his pike and hit a passing calf. David instantly leaped
on to the parapet; he uttered a joyful exclamation.... Something
white, something blue gleamed in the air and shot into the water--it
was the silver watch with Vassily's blue bead chain flying into the
water.... But then something incredible happened. After the watch
David's feet flew upwards--and head foremost, with his hands thrust
out before him and the lapels of his jacket fluttering, he described
an arc in the air (as frightened frogs jump on hot days from a high
bank into a pond) and instantly vanished behind the parapet of the
bridge ... and then flop! and a tremendous splash below.

What happened to me I am utterly unable to describe. I was some steps
from David when he leapt off the parapet ... but I don't even remember
whether I cried out; I don't think that I was even frightened: I was
stunned, stupefied. I could not stir hand or foot. People were running
and hustling round me; some of them seemed to be people I knew. I had
a sudden glimpse of Trofimitch, the soldier with the pike dashed off
somewhere, the horses and the waggons passed by quickly, tossing up
their noses covered with string. Then everything was green before my
eyes and someone gave me a violent shove on my head and all down my
back ... I fell fainting.

I remember that I came to myself afterwards and seeing that no one was
paying any attention to me went up to the parapet but not on the side
that David had jumped. It seemed terrible to me to approach it, and as
I began gazing into the dark blue muddy swollen river, I remember that
I noticed a boat moored to the bridge not far from the bank, and
several people in the boat, and one of these, who was drenched all
over and sparkling in the sun, bending over the edge of the boat was
pulling something out of the water, something not very big, oblong, a
dark thing which at first I took to be a portmanteau or a basket; but
when I looked more intently I saw that the thing was--David. Then in
violent excitement I shouted at the top of my voice and ran towards
the boat, pushing my way through the people, but when I had run down
to it I was overcome with timidity and began looking about me. Among
the people who were crowding about it I recognised Trankvillitatin,
the cook Agapit with a boot in his hand, Yushka, Vassily ... the wet
and shining man held David's body under the arms, drew him out of the
boat and laid him on his back on the mud of the bank. Both David's
hands were raised to the level of his face as though he were trying to
hide himself from strange eyes; he did not stir but lay as though
standing at attention, with his heels together and his stomach out.
His face was greenish--his eyes were staring and water was dripping
from his hair. The wet man who had pulled him out, a factory hand,
judging by his clothes, began describing how he had done it, shivering
with cold and continually throwing back his hair from his forehead as
he talked. He told his story in a very proper and painstaking way.

"What do I see, friends? This young lad go flying from the bridge....
Well! ... I ran down at once the way of the current for I knew he had
fallen into mid-stream and it would carry him under the bridge and
there ... talk of the devil! ... I looked: something like a fur cap was
floating and it was his head. Well, quick as thought, I was in the
water and caught hold of him.... It didn't need much cleverness for
that!"

Two or three words of approval were audible in the crowd.

"You ought to have something to warm you now. Come along and we will
have a drink," said someone.

But at this point all at once somebody pushed forward abruptly: it was
Vassily.

"What are you doing, good Christians?" he cried, tearfully. "We must
bring him to by rolling him; it's our young gentleman!"

"Roll him, roll him," shouted the crowd, which was continually
growing.

"Hang him up by the feet! it's the best way!"

"Lay him with his stomach on the barrel and roll him backwards and
forwards.... Take him, lads."

"Don't dare to touch him," put in the soldier with the pike. "He must
be taken to the police station."

"Low brute," Trofimitch's bass voice rang out.

"But he is alive," I shouted at the top of my voice and almost with
horror. I had put my face near to his. "So that is what the drowned
look like," I thought, with a sinking heart.... And all at once I saw
David's lips stir and a little water oozed from them....

At once I was pushed back and dragged away; everyone rushed up to him.

"Roll him, roll him," voices clamoured.

"No, no, stay," shouted Vassily. "Take him home.... Take him home!"

"Take him home," Trankvillitatin himself chimed in.

"We will bring him to. We can see better there," Vassily went on....
(I have liked him from that day.) "Lads, haven't you a sack? If not we
must take him by his head and his feet...."

"Stay! Here's a sack! Lay him on it! Catch hold! Start! That's fine.
As though he were driving in a chaise."

A few minutes later David, borne in triumph on the sack, crossed the
threshold of our house again.

XX

He was undressed and put to bed. He began to give signs of life while
in the street, moaned, moved his hands.... Indoors he came to himself
completely. But as soon as all anxiety for his life was over and there
was no reason to worry about him, indignation got the upper hand
again: everyone shunned him, as though he were a leper.

"May God chastise him! May God chastise him!" my aunt shrieked, to be
heard all over the house. "Get rid of him, somehow, Porfiry
Petrovitch, or he will do some mischief beyond all bearing."

"Upon my word, he is a viper; he is possessed with a devil,"
Trankvillitatin chimed in.

"The wickedness, the wickedness!" cackled my aunt, going close to the
door of our room so that David might be sure to hear her. "First of
all he stole the watch and then flung it into the water ... as though
to say, no one should get it...."

Everyone, everyone was indignant.

"David," I asked him as soon as we were left alone, "what did you do
it for?"

"So you are after that, too," he answered in a voice that was still
weak; his lips were blue and he looked as though he were swollen all
over. "What did I do?"

"But what did you jump into the water for?"

"Jump! I lost my balance on the parapet, that was all. If I had known
how to swim I should have jumped on purpose. I shall certainly learn.
But the watch now--ah...."

But at that moment my father walked with a majestic step into our
room.

"You, my fine fellow," he said, addressing me, "I shall certainly
whip, you need have no doubt about that, though you are too big to lie
on the bench now."

Then he went up to the bed on which David was lying. "In Siberia," he
began in an impressive and dignified tone, "in Siberia, sir, in penal
servitude, in the mines, there are people living and dying who are
less guilty, less criminal than you. Are you a suicide or simply a
thief or altogether a fool? Be so kind as to tell me just that!"

"I am not a suicide and I am not a thief," answered David, "but the
truth's the truth: there are good men in Siberia, better than you or
I ... who should know that, if not you?"

My father gave a subdued gasp, drew back a step, looked intently at
David, spat on the floor and, slowly crossing himself, walked away.

"Don't you like that?" David called after him and put his tongue out.
Then he tried to get up but could not.

"I must have hurt myself somehow," he said, gasping and frowning. "I
remember the water dashed me against a post."

"Did you see Raissa?" he added suddenly.

"No. I did not.... Stay, stay, stay! Now I remember, wasn't it she
standing on the bank by the bridge? ... Yes ... yes ... a dark
dress ... a yellow kerchief on her head, yes it must have been
Raissa."

"Well, and afterwards.... Did you see her?"

"Afterwards ... I don't know, I had no thought to spare for her....
You jumped in ..."

David was suddenly roused. "Alyosha, darling, go to her at once, tell
her I am all right, that there's nothing the matter with me. Tomorrow
I shall be with them. Go as quickly as you can, brother, for my sake!"

David held out both hands to me.... His red hair, by now dry, stuck up
in amusing tufts.... But the softened expression of his face seemed
the more genuine for that. I took my cap and went out of the house,
trying to avoid meeting my father and reminding him of his promise.

XXI

"Yes, indeed," I reflected as I walked towards the Latkins', "how was
it that I did not notice Raissa? What became of her? She must have
seen...."

And all at once I remembered that the very moment of David's fall, a
terrible piercing shriek had rung in my ears.

"Was not that Raissa? But how was it I did not see her afterwards?"

Before the little house in which Latkin lodged there stretched a
waste-ground overgrown with nettles and surrounded by a broken hurdle.
I had scarcely clambered over the hurdle (there was no gate anywhere)
when the following sight met my eyes: Raissa, with her elbows on her
knees and her chin propped on her clasped hands, was sitting on the
lowest step in front of the house; she was looking fixedly straight
before her; near her stood her little dumb sister with the utmost
composure brandishing a little whip, while, facing the steps with his
back to me, old Latkin, in torn and shabby drawers and high felt
boots, was trotting and prancing up and down, capering and jerking his
elbows. Hearing my footsteps he suddenly turned round and squatted
on his heels--then at once, skipping up to me, began speaking
very rapidly in a trembling voice, incessantly repeating,
"Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo!" I was dumbfoundered. I had not seen him for a
long time and should not, of course, have known him if I had met him
anywhere else. That red, wrinkled, toothless face, those lustreless
round eyes and touzled grey hair, those jerks and capers, that
senseless halting speech! What did it mean? What inhuman despair was
torturing this unhappy creature? What dance of death was this?

"Tchoo--tchoo," he muttered, wriggling incessantly. "See Vassilyevna
here came in tchoo--tchoo, just now.... Do you hear? With a trough on
the roof" (he slapped himself on the head with his hand), "and there
she sits like a spade, and she is cross-eyed, cross-eyed, like
Andryushka; Vassilyevna is cross-eyed" (he probably meant to say
dumb), "tchoo! My Vassilyevna is cross-eyed! They are both on the same
cork now. You may wonder, good Christians! I have only these two
little boats! Eh?"

Latkin was evidently conscious that he was not saying the right thing
and made terrible efforts to explain to me what was the matter. Raissa
did not seem to hear what her father was saying and the little sister
went on lashing the whip.

"Good-bye, diamond-merchant, good-bye, good-bye," Latkin drawled
several times in succession, making a low bow, seeming delighted at
having at last got hold of an intelligible word.

My head began to go round.

"What does it all mean?" I asked of an old woman who was looking out
of the window of the little house.

"Well, my good gentleman," she answered in a sing-song voice, "they
say some man--the Lord only knows who--went and drowned himself and
she saw it. Well, it gave her a fright or something; when she came
home she seemed all right though; but when she sat down on the
step--here, she has been sitting ever since like an image, it's no good
talking to her. I suppose she has lost her speech, too. Oh, dear! Oh,
dear!"

"Good-bye, good-bye," Latkin kept repeating, still with the same bow.

I went up to Raissa and stood directly facing her.

"Raissa, dear, what's the matter with you?"

She made no answer, she seemed not to notice me. Her face had not
grown pale, had not changed--but had turned somehow stony and there
was a look in it as though she were just falling asleep.

"She is cross-eyed, cross-eyed," Latkin muttered in my ear.

I took Raissa by the hand. "David is alive," I cried, more loudly than
before. "Alive and well; David's alive, do you understand? He was
pulled out of the water; he is at home now and told me to say that he
will come to you to-morrow; he is alive!" As it were with effort
Raissa turned her eyes on me; she blinked several times, opening them
wider and wider, then leaned her head on one side and flushed slightly
all over while her lips parted ... she slowly drew in a deep breath,
winced as though in pain and with fearful effort articulated:

"Da ... Dav ... a ... alive," got up impulsively and rushed away.

"Where are you going?" I exclaimed. But with a faint laugh she ran
staggering across the waste-ground....

I, of course, followed her, while behind me a wail rose up in unison
from the old man and the child.... Raissa darted straight to our
house.

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