"During the first forty days?"
"Yes; and after that come its tribulations."[66]
Arátoff was surprised at his aunt's erudition, and went off to his own room.—And again he felt the same thing, that same power upon him. The power was manifested thus—that the image of Clara incessantly presented itself to him, in its most minute details,—details which he did not seem to have observed during her lifetime; he saw … he saw her fingers, her nails, the bands of hair on her cheeks below her temples, a small mole under the left eye; he saw the movement of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows … and what sort of a gait she had, and how she held her head a little on the right side … he saw everything!—He did not admire all this at all; he simply could not help thinking about it and seeing it.—Yet he did not dream about her during the first night after his return … he was very weary and slept like one slain. On the other hand, no sooner did he awake than she again entered his room, and there she remained, as though she had been its owner; just as though she had purchased for herself that right by her voluntary death, without asking him or requiring his permission.
He took her photograph; he began to reproduce it, to enlarge it. Then it occurred to him to arrange it for the stereoscope. It cost him a great deal of trouble, but at last he succeeded. He fairly started when he beheld through the glass her figure which had acquired the semblance of bodily substance. But that figure was grey, as though covered with dust … and moreover, the eyes … the eyes still gazed aside, as though they were averting themselves. He began to gaze at them for a long, long time, as though expecting that they might, at any moment, turn themselves in his direction … he even puckered up his eyes deliberately … but the eyes remained motionless, and the whole figure assumed the aspect of a doll. He went away, threw himself into an arm-chair, got out the leaf which he had torn from her diary, with the underlined words, and thought: "They say that people in love kiss the lines which have been written by a beloved hand; but I have no desire to do that—and the chirography appears to me ugly into the bargain. But in that line lies my condemnation."—At this point there flashed into his mind the promise he had made to Anna about the article. He seated himself at his table, and set about writing it; but everything he wrote turned out so rhetorical … worst of all, so artificial … just as though he did not believe in what he was writing, or in his own feelings … and Clara herself seemed to him unrecognisable, incomprehensible! She would not yield herself to him.
"No," he thought, throwing aside his pen, "either I have no talent for writing in general, or I must wait a while yet!"
He began to call to mind his visit to the Milovídoffs, and all the narration of Anna, of that kind, splendid Anna…. The word she had uttered: "unsullied!" suddenly struck him. It was exactly as though something had scorched and illuminated him.
"Yes," he said aloud, "she was unsullied and I am unsullied…. That is what has given her this power!"
Thoughts concerning the immortality of the soul, the life beyond the grave, again visited him. "Is it not said in the Bible: 'O death, where is thy sting?' And in Schiller: 'And the dead also shall live!' (Auch die Todten sollen leben!)—Or here again, in Mickiewicz, 'I shall love until life ends … and after life ends!'—While one English writer has said: 'Love is stronger than death!'"—The biblical sentence acted with peculiar force on Arátoff. He wanted to look up the place where those words were to be found…. He had no Bible; he went to borrow one from Platósha. She was astonished; but she got out an old, old book in a warped leather binding with brass clasps, all spotted with wax, and handed it to Arátoff. He carried it off to his own room, but for a long time could not find that verse … but on the other hand, he hit upon another:
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends"…. (the Gospel of John, Chap. XV, verse 13).
He thought: "That is not properly expressed.—It should read: 'Greater power hath no man!'"….