Dream Tales and Prose Poems | Page 8

dare say.... I'm not used to it; that's all ...'--it
actually was the first time his attention had ever happened to be drawn
to a person of the female sex ... at least he had never noticed it
before--'I mustn't give way to it.'
And he set to work on his books, and at night drank some lime-flower
tea; and positively slept well that night, and had no dreams. The next
morning he took up his photography again as though nothing had
happened....
But towards evening his spiritual repose was again disturbed.
VI
And this is what happened. A messenger brought him a note, written in
a large irregular woman's hand, and containing the following lines:
'If you guess who it is writes to you, and if it is not a bore to you, come
to-morrow after dinner to the Tversky boulevard--about five
o'clock--and wait. You shall not be kept long. But it is very important.
Do come.'
There was no signature. Aratov at once guessed who was his
correspondent, and this was just what disturbed him. 'What folly,' he
said, almost aloud; 'this is too much. Of course I shan't go.' He sent,
however, for the messenger, and from him learnt nothing but that the
note had been handed him by a maid-servant in the street. Dismissing
him, Aratov read the letter through and flung it on the ground.... But,
after a little while, he picked it up and read it again: a second time he
cried, 'Folly!'--he did not, however, throw the note on the floor again,
but put it in a drawer. Aratov took up his ordinary occupations, first
one and then another; but nothing he did was successful or satisfactory.
He suddenly realised that he was eagerly expecting Kupfer! Did he
want to question him, or perhaps even to confide in him?... But Kupfer
did not make his appearance. Then Aratov took down Pushkin, read
Tatiana's letter, and convinced himself again that the 'gipsy girl' had not
in the least understood the real force of the letter. And that donkey

Kupfer shouts: Rachel! Viardot! Then he went to his piano, as it
seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the
melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in
vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for
ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and
was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools,
cushions, and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it
would have found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in
it. Platonida Ivanovna was sitting at the window, her knitting in her
hands (she was knitting her darling Yasha a comforter, the thirty-eighth
she had made him in the course of his life!), and was much astonished
to see him. Aratov rarely went up to her, and if he wanted anything,
used always to call, in his delicate voice, from his study: 'Aunt
Platosha!' However, she made him sit down, and sat all alert, in
expectation of his first words, watching him through her spectacles
with one eye, over them with the other. She did not inquire after his
health nor offer him tea, as she saw he had not come for that. Aratov
was a little disconcerted ... then he began to talk ... talked of his mother,
of how she had lived with his father and how his father had got to know
her. All this he knew very well ... but it was just what he wanted to talk
about. Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to keep up a
conversation at all; she gave him very brief replies, as though she
suspected that was not what Yasha had come for.
'Eh!' she repeated, hurriedly, almost irritably plying her

knitting-needles. 'We all know: your mother was a darling ... a darling
that she was.... And your father loved her as a husband should, truly
and faithfully even in her grave; and he never loved any other woman':
she added, raising her voice and taking off her spectacles.
'And was she of a retiring disposition?' Aratov inquired, after a short
silence.
'Retiring! to be sure she was. As a woman should be. Bold ones have
sprung up nowadays.'
'And were there no bold ones in your time?'

'There were in our time too ... to be sure there were! But who were they?
A pack of strumpets, shameless hussies. Draggle-tails--for ever gadding
about after no good.... What do they care? It's little they take to heart. If
some poor fool comes in their way, they pounce on him. But sensible
folk looked down on them. Did you ever see, pray, the like of such in
our