Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev

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Further search led to nothing--and I went back to the hut with the
comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.

IX

I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the
table before him and he was writing something in a little album which
he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his
pocket and began filling his pipe.

"Look here, my friend," I began, "what a trophy I have brought back
from my expedition!" I showed him the comb and told him what had
happened to me near the willow. "I must have startled a thief," I
added. "You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?"

Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.

"And do you still believe, Ilya Stepanitch," I said, "that the voice
we heard came from those unknown realms...."

He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.

"Ridel," he began, "I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not
to jest."

He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It
looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, "different"
eyes kept shifting from one object to another.

"I never thought," he began again, "that I should reveal to
another ... another man what you are about to hear and what ought
to have died ... yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is
to be--and indeed I have no choice. It is destiny! Listen."

And he told me a long story.

I have mentioned already that he was a poor hand at telling stories,
but it was not only his lack of skill in describing events that had
happened to him that impressed me that night; the very sound of his
voice, his glances, the movements which he made with his fingers and
his hands--everything about him, indeed, seemed unnatural,
unnecessary, false, in fact. I was very young and inexperienced in
those days and did not know that the habit of high-flown language and
falsity of intonation and manner may become so ingrained in a man that
he is incapable of shaking it off: it is a sort of curse. Later in
life I came across a lady who described to me the effect on her of her
son's death, of her "boundless" grief, of her fears for her reason, in
such exaggerated language, with such theatrical gestures, such
melodramatic movements of her head and rolling of her eyes, that I
thought to myself, "How false and affected that lady is! She did not
love her son at all!" And a week afterwards I heard that the poor
woman had really gone out of her mind. Since then I have become much
more careful in my judgments and have had far less confidence in my
own impressions.

X

The story which Tyeglev told me was, briefly, as follows. He had
living in Petersburg, besides his influential uncle, an aunt, not
influential but wealthy. As she had no children of her own she had
adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a
liberal education and treated her like a daughter. She was called
Masha. Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in
love with one another and Masha's giving herself to him. This was
discovered. Tyeglev's aunt was fearfully incensed, she turned the
luckless girl out of her house in disgrace, and moved to Moscow where
she adopted a young lady of noble birth and made her her heiress. On
her return to her own relations, poor and drunken people, Masha's lot
was a bitter one. Tyeglev had promised to marry her and did not keep
his promise. At his last interview with her, he was forced to speak
out: she wanted to know the truth and wrung it out of him. "Well," she
said, "if I am not to be your wife, I know what there is left for me
to do." More than a fortnight had passed since that last interview.

"I never for a moment deceived myself as to the meaning of her last
words," added Tyeglev. "I am certain that she has put an end to her
life and ... and that it was _her_ voice, that it was _she_
calling me ... to follow her there ... I _recognised_ her
voice.... Well, there is but one end to it."

"But why didn't you marry her, Ilya Stepanitch?" I asked. "You ceased
to love her?"

"No; I still love her passionately."

At this point I stared at Tyeglev. I remembered another friend of
mine, a very intelligent man, who had a very plain wife, neither
intelligent nor rich and was very unhappy in his marriage. When
someone in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested that
it was probably for love, he answered, "Not for love at all. It simply
happened." And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately and did
not marry her. Was it for the same reason, then?

"Why don't you marry her, then?" I asked again.

Tyeglev's strange, drowsy eyes strayed over the table.

"There is ... no answering that ... in a few words," he began,
hesitating. "There were reasons.... And besides, she was ... a
working-class girl. And then there is my uncle.... I was obliged to
consider him, too."

"Your uncle?" I cried. "But what the devil do you want with your uncle
whom you never see except at the New Year when you go to congratulate
him? Are you reckoning on his money? But he has got a dozen children
of his own!"

I spoke with heat.... Tyeglev winced and flushed ... flushed unevenly,
in patches.

"Don't lecture me, if you please," he said dully. "I don't justify
myself, however. I have ruined her life and now I must pay the
penalty...."

His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing to say, either.

XI

So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked away--I looked at
him--and I noticed that the hair stood up and curled above his
forehead in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army doctor
who had had a great many wounded pass through his hands, is always a
symptom of intense overheating of the brain.... The thought struck me
again that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man and that his
comrades were right in seeing something "fatal" in him. And yet
inwardly I blamed him. "A working-class girl!" I thought, "a fine sort
of aristocrat you are yourself!"

"Perhaps you blame me, Ridel," Tyeglev began suddenly, as though
guessing what I was thinking. "I am very ... unhappy myself. But what
to do? What to do?"

He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the broad flat nails
of his short, red fingers, hard as iron.

"What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make
certain whether your suppositions are correct.... Perhaps your lady
love is alive and well." ("Shall I tell him the real explanation of
the taps?" flashed through my mind. "No--later.")

"She has not written to me since we have been in camp," observed
Tyeglev.

"That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch."

Tyeglev waved me off. "No! she is certainly not in this world. She
called me."

He suddenly turned to the window. "Someone is knocking again!"

I could not help laughing. "No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time
it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the
sun will be up--it is past three o'clock--and ghosts have no power in
the day."

Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth
"good-bye," lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.

I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why
Tyeglev was always hinting at ... suicide. What nonsense! What humbug!
Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her off ...
and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He could
not resist posing!

With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my
eyes the sun was already high in the sky--and Tyeglev was not in the
hut.

He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.

XII

I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to
dinner nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a
thick fog came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to
bed rather early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.

It was _my_ turn to be startled!

The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have
no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev.
Wrapped in his great-coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood
motionless.

"Ilya Stepanitch!" I cried, "is that you? I gave up expecting you.
Come in. Is the door locked?"

Tyeglev shook his head. "I do not intend to come in," he pronounced in
a hollow tone. "I only want to ask you to give this letter to the
commanding officer to-morrow."

He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was
astonished--however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once
walked away into the middle of the road.

"Stop! stop!" I began. "Where are you going? Have you only just come?
And what is the letter?"

"Do you promise to deliver it?" said Tyeglev, and moved away a few
steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. "Do you
promise?"

"I promise ... but first--"

Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur.
"Good-bye," I heard his voice. "Farewell, Ridel, don't remember evil
against me.... And don't forget Semyon...."

And the blur itself vanished.

This was too much. "Oh, the damned _poseur_," I thought. "You
must always be straining after effect!" I felt uneasy, however; an
involuntary fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great-coat and
ran out into the road.

XIII

Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For
five or six steps all round it was a little transparent--but further
away it stood up like a wall, thick and white like cotton wool. I
turned to the right along the village street; our house was the last
but one in the village and beyond it came waste land overgrown here
and there with bushes; beyond the waste land, a quarter of a mile from
the village, there was a birch copse through which flowed the same
little stream that lower down encircled our village. The moon stood, a
pale blur in the sky--but its light was not, as on the evening before,
strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a
broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground
and listened.... Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of
the marsh birds.

"Tyeglev!" I cried. "Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!"

My voice died away near me without an answer; it seemed as though the
fog would not let it go further. "Tyeglev!" I repeated.

No one answered.

I went forward at random. Twice I struck against a fence, once I
nearly fell into a ditch, and almost stumbled against a peasant's
horse lying on the ground. "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!" I cried.

All at once, almost behind me, I heard a low voice, "Well, here I am.
What do you want of me?"

I turned round quickly.

Before me stood Tyeglev with his hands hanging at his sides and with
no cap on his head. His face was pale; but his eyes looked animated
and bigger than usual. His breathing came in deep, prolonged gasps
through his parted lips.

"Thank God!" I cried in an outburst of joy, and I gripped him by both
hands. "Thank God! I was beginning to despair of finding you. Aren't
you ashamed of frightening me like this? Upon my word, Ilya
Stepanitch!"

"What do you want of me?" repeated Tyeglev.

"I want ... I want you, in the first place, to come back home with me.
And secondly, I want, I insist, I insist as a friend, that you explain
to me at once the meaning of your actions--and of this letter to the
colonel. Can something unexpected have happened to you in Petersburg?"

"I found in Petersburg exactly what I expected," answered Tyeglev,
without moving from the spot.

"That is ... you mean to say ... your friend ... this Masha...."

"She has taken her life," Tyeglev answered hurriedly and as it were
angrily. "She was buried the day before yesterday. She did not even
leave a note for me. She poisoned herself."

Tyeglev hurriedly uttered these terrible words and still stood
motionless as a stone.

I clasped my hands. "Is it possible? How dreadful! Your presentiment
has come true.... That is awful!"

I stopped in confusion. Slowly and with a sort of triumph Tyeglev
folded his arms.

"But why are we standing here?" I began. "Let us go home."

"Let us," said Tyeglev. "But how can we find the way in this fog?"

"There is a light in our windows, and we will make for it. Come
along."

"You go ahead," answered Tyeglev. "I will follow you." We set off. We
walked for five minutes and our beacon light still did not appear; at
last it gleamed before us in two red points. Tyeglev stepped evenly
behind me. I was desperately anxious to get home as quickly as
possible and to learn from him all the details of his unhappy
expedition to Petersburg. Before we reached the hut, impressed by what
he had said, I confessed to him in an access of remorse and a sort of
superstitious fear, that the mysterious knocking of the previous
evening had been my doing ... and what a tragic turn my jest had
taken!

Tyeglev confined himself to observing that I had nothing to do with
it--that something else had guided my hand--and this only showed how
little I knew him. His voice, strangely calm and even, sounded close
to my ear. "But you do not know me," he added. "I saw you smile
yesterday when I spoke of the strength of my will. You will come to
know me--and you will remember my words."

The first hut of the village sprang out of the fog before us like some
dark monster ... then the second, our hut, emerged--and my setter dog
began barking, probably scenting me.

I knocked at the window. "Semyon!" I shouted to Tyeglev's servant,
"hey, Semyon! Make haste and open the gate for us."

The gate creaked and opened; Semyon crossed the threshold.

"Ilya Stepanitch, come in," I said, and I looked round. But no Ilya
Stepanitch was with me. Tyeglev had vanished as though he had sunk
into the earth.

I went into the hut feeling dazed.

XIV

Vexation with Tyeglev and with myself succeeded the amazement with
which I was overcome at first.

"Your master is mad!" I blurted out to Semyon, "raving mad! He
galloped off to Petersburg, then came back and is running about all
over the place! I did get hold of him and brought him right up to the
gate--and here he has given me the slip again! To go out of doors on a
night like this! He has chosen a nice time for a walk!"

"And why did I let go of his hand?" I reproached myself. Semyon looked
at me in silence, as though intending to say something--but after the
fashion of servants in those days he simply shifted from one foot to
the other and said nothing.

"What time did he set off for town?" I asked sternly.

"At six o'clock in the morning."

"And how was he--did he seem anxious, depressed?" Semyon looked down.
"Our master is a deep one," he began. "Who can make him out? He told
me to get out his new uniform when he was going out to town--and then
he curled himself."

"Curled himself?"

"Curled his hair. I got the curling tongs ready for him."

That, I confess, I had not expected. "Do you know a young lady," I
asked Semyon, "a friend of Ilya Stepanitch's. Her name is Masha."

"To be sure I know Marya Anempodistovna! A nice young lady."

"Is your master in love with this Marya ... et cetera?"

Semyon heaved a sigh. "That young lady is Ilya Stepanitch's undoing.
For he is desperately in love with her--and can't bring himself to
marry her--and sorry to give her up, too. It's all his honour's
faintheartedness. He is very fond of her."

"What is she like then, pretty?" I inquired.

Semyon assumed a grave air. "She is the sort that the gentry like."

"And you?"

"She is not the right sort for us at all."

"How so?"

"Very thin in the body."

"If she died," I began, "do you think Ilya Stepanitch would not
survive her?"

Semyon heaved a sigh again. "I can't venture to say that--there's no
knowing with gentlemen ... but our master is a deep one."

I took up from the table the big, rather thick letter that Tyeglev had
given me and turned it over in my hands.... The address to "his honour
the Commanding Officer of the Battery, Colonel So and So" (the name,
patronymic, and surname) was clearly and distinctly written. The word
_urgent_, twice underlined, was written in the top left-hand
corner of the envelope.

"Listen, Semyon," I began. "I feel uneasy about your master. I fancy
he has some mischief in his mind. We must find him."

"Yes, sir," answered Semyon.

"It is true there is such a fog that one cannot see a couple of yards
ahead; but all the same we must do our best. We will each take a
lantern and light a candle in each window--in case of need."

"Yes, sir," repeated Semyon. He lighted the lanterns and the candles
and we set off.

XV

I can't describe how we wandered and lost our way! The lanterns were
of no help to us; they did not in the least dissipate the white,
almost luminous mist which surrounded us. Several times Semyon and I
lost each other, in spite of the fact that we kept calling to each
other and hallooing and at frequent intervals shouted--I: "Tyeglev!
Ilya Stepanitch!" and Semyon: "Mr. Tyeglev! Your honour!" The fog so
bewildered us that we wandered about as though in a dream; soon we
were both hoarse; the fog penetrated right into one's chest. We
succeeded somehow by help of the candles in the windows in reaching
the hut again. Our combined action had been of no use--we merely
handicapped each other--and so we made up our minds not to trouble
ourselves about getting separated but to go each our own way. He went
to the left, I to the right and I soon ceased to hear his voice. The
fog seemed to have found its way into my brain and I wandered like one
dazed, simply shouting from time to time, "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!"

"Here!" I heard suddenly in answer.

Holy saints, how relieved I was! How I rushed in the direction from
which the voice came.... A human figure loomed dark before me.... I
made for it. At last!

But instead of Tyeglev I saw another officer of the same battery,
whose name was Tyelepnev.

"Was it you answered me?" I asked him.

"Was it you calling me?" he asked in his turn.

"No; I was calling Tyeglev."

"Tyeglev? Why, I met him a minute ago. What a fool of a night! One
can't find the way home."

"You saw Tyeglev? Which way did he go?"

"That way, I fancy," said the officer, waving his hand in the air.
"But one can't be sure of anything now. Do you know, for instance,
where the village is? The only hope is the dogs barking. It is a fool
of a night! Let me light a cigarette ... it will seem like a light on
the way."

The officer was, so I fancied, a little exhilarated.

"Did Tyeglev say anything to you?" I asked.

"To be sure he did! I said to him, 'good evening, brother,' and he
said, 'good-bye.' 'How good-bye? Why good-bye.' 'I mean to shoot
myself directly with a pistol.' He is a queer fish!"

My heart stood still. "You say he told you ..."

"He is a queer fish!" repeated the officer, and sauntered off.

I hardly had time to recover from what the officer had told me, when
my own name, shouted several times as it seemed with effort, caught my
ear. I recognised Semyon's voice.

I called back ... he came to me.

XVI

"Well?" I asked him. "Have you found Ilya Stepanitch?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where?"

"Here, not far away."

"How ... have you found him? Is he alive?"

"To be sure. I have been talking to him." (A load was lifted from
my heart.) "His honour was sitting in his great-coat under a birch
tree ... and he was all right. I put it to him, 'Won't you come home,
Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you.'
And he said to me, 'What does he want to worry for! I want to be in the
fresh air. My head aches. Go home,' he said, 'and I will come later.'"

"And you left him?" I cried, clasping my hands.

"What else could I do? He told me to go ... how could I stay?"

All my fears came back to me at once.

"Take me to him this minute--do you hear? This minute! O Semyon,
Semyon, I did not expect this of you! You say he is not far off?"

"He is quite close, here, where the copse begins--he is sitting there.
It is not more than five yards from the river bank. I found him as I
came alongside the river."

"Well, take me to him, take me to him."

Semyon set off ahead of me. "This way, sir.... We have only to get
down to the river and it is close there."

But instead of getting down to the river we got into a hollow and
found ourselves before an empty shed.

"Hey, stop!" Semyon cried suddenly. "I must have come too far to the
right.... We must go that way, more to the left...."

We turned to the left--and found ourselves among such high, rank weeds
that we could scarcely get out.... I could not remember such a tangled
growth of weeds anywhere near our village. And then all at once a marsh
was squelching under our feet, and we saw little round moss-covered
hillocks which I had never noticed before either.... We turned
back--a small hill was sharply before us and on the top of it stood a
shanty--and in it someone was snoring. Semyon and I shouted several
times into the shanty; something stirred at the further end of it, the
straw rustled--and a hoarse voice shouted, "I am on guard."

We turned back again ... fields and fields, endless fields.... I felt
ready to cry.... I remembered the words of the fool in _King
Lear_: "This night will turn us all to fools or madmen."

"Where are we to go?" I said in despair to Semyon.

"The devil must have led us astray, sir," answered the distracted
servant. "It's not natural ... there's mischief at the bottom of it!"

I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound,
distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was a
faint "pop" as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrow
bottle-neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the sound
seemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I went
towards it.

Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broad
loomed in the fog.

"The copse! here is the copse!" Semyon cried, delighted. "Yes,
here ... and there is the master sitting under the birch-tree....
There he is, sitting where I left him. That's he, surely enough!"

I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us,
awkwardly huddled up under the birch-tree. I hurriedly approached and
recognised Tyeglev's great-coat, recognised his figure, his head bowed
on his breast. "Tyeglev!" I cried ... but he did not answer.

"Tyeglev!" I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then he
suddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he were
waiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised him
at once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifeless
and motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white--and his eyes,
motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and
"different" look.

"Good God!" Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stained
crimson with blood.... The blood was coming from under Tyeglev's
great-coat, from the left side of his chest.

He had shot himself from a small, single-barreled pistol which was
lying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by the
fatal shot.

XVII

Tyeglev's suicide did not surprise his comrades very much. I have told
you already that, according to their ideas, as a "fatal" man he was
bound to do something extraordinary, though perhaps they had not
expected that from him. In the letter to the colonel he asked him, in
the first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from the
list of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in his
cash-box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay his
debts,--and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that
time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which
was in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read;
some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over
the composition of this letter.

"You know, Your Excellency" (so I remember the letter began), "you are
so stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when a
pale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I now
going to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, the
Supreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even than
Your Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in my
great-coat, and even without a cravat round my neck."

Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me,
with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead
man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to
invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been
pleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation of
epithets and amplifications _a la_ Marlinsky, at that time in
fashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to his
vocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he would
bear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understand
him; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowd
that it wore life "like a dog-collar" and clung to vice "like a
burdock"--and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell the
truth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I can
fancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it was
addressed--I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce "a
worthless officer! ill weeds are cleared out of the field!"

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