On the Eve | Page 7

or a moan, like a harp string, but don't
expect a song from her. A living heart, now--that will give you your
answer--especially a woman's heart. So, my dear fellow, I advise you to
get yourself some one to share your heart, and all your distressing
sensations will vanish at once. "That's what we need," as you say. This
agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of a
kind. Give the stomach some real food, and everything will be right
directly. Take your place in the landscape, live in the body, my dear
boy. And after all, what is nature? what's the use of it? Only hear the
word, love--what an intense, glowing sound it has! Nature--what a cold,
pedantic expression. And so' (Shubin began humming), 'my greetings
to Marya Petrovna! or rather,' he added, 'not Marya Petrovna, but it's all
the same! Voo me compreny.'
Bersenyev got up and stood with his chin leaning on his clasped hands.
'What is there to laugh at?' he said, without looking at his companion,
'why should you scoff? Yes, you are right: love is a grand word, a
grand feeling. . . . But what sort of love do you mean?'
Shubin too, got up. 'What sort? What you like, so long as it's there. I

will confess to you that I don't believe in the existence of different
kinds of love. If you are in love----'
'With your whole heart,' put in Bersenyev.
'Well, of course, that's an understood thing; the heart's not an apple;
you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And I wasn't
thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if it had been
melted. ... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us you
spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not
capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living
embraces, but we don't understand, and expect something from nature
herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything
around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you were
holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole
woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not
your own isolated emotion, but her emotion--nature would not make
you melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing
nature's beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she
would be re-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given
her--dumb nature--speech!'
Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but
Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always
urge us ... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.)
'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful . . . yes, insoluble
mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing
us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks
in her as loudly as life.'
'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin.
'And then,' Bersenyev went on: 'when I, for example, stand in the
spring in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic
notes of Oberon's fairy horn' (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he
had spoken these words)--'is that, too----'
'The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!' broke in
Shubin. 'I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the
expectation which come upon the soul in the forest's shade, in its deep
recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the river
mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields, and sky,

every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping for
happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness calling in
everything. "God of my worship, bright and gay!" That was how I tried
to begin my sole poem; you must own it's a splendid first line, but I
could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as life is
not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long as we are
going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!' pursued Shubin with sudden
vehemence, 'we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will
conquer happiness for ourselves!'
He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance
upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.
'Is there nothing higher than happiness?' he commented softly.
'And what, for instance?' asked Shubin,