The diary of a superfluous man, and other stories

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Yes, more than once did Akím grow pensive, grunt and sigh.... But his love for his pretty wife did not diminish; he was proud of her, especially when he compared her, not only with the other peasant women, or with his former wife, whom he had married at the age of sixteen, but with the other maids of the house-serf class: as much as to say: "Just see what sort of a bird we 've captured!".... Her slightest caress afforded him great pleasure... "Perhaps," he thought to himself, "she 'll get used to me, she 'll grow accustomed to her new life..." Moreover, she conducted herself very well, and no one could say an evil word concerning her.

Several years passed in this manner. Dunyásha really did end by becoming used to her existence. The older Akím grew, the more attached he became to her, and the more he trusted her; her friends, who had married men not of the peasant class, suffered dire need, or were in distress, or had fallen into evil hands.... But Akím continued to wax richer and richer. He succeeded in everything—he was lucky; only one thing grieved him: God had not given him any children. Dunyásha was already in her twenty-fifth year; every one had come to call her Avdótya Aréfyevna.[40] Nevertheless, she had not become a good housewife.—But she had come to love her home, she attended to the stores of provisions, she looked after the servant-maids.... Truth to tell, she did all this in an indifferent way, and did not exercise the proper oversight as to cleanliness and order; but, on the other hand, in the principal room of the inn, alongside the portrait of Akím, hung her portrait, painted in oils and ordered by her from a home-bred artist, the son of the parish deacon.—She was represented in a white gown and a yellow shawl, with six rows of large pearls on her neck, long earrings in her ears, and rings on every finger... It was possible to recognise her,—although the painter had depicted her as extremely corpulent and rosy-cheeked, and had painted her eyes black instead of grey, and even a trifle squinting... He had not succeeded at all with Akím: the latter had, somehow, turned out very dark—à la Rembrandt,—so that a traveller would sometimes step up and stare at it, and merely bellow a bit.

Avdótya had begun to dress with a good deal of carelessness; she would throw a large kerchief over her shoulders, and the gown under it would fit anyhow; indolence had taken possession of her, that sighing, languid, sleepy indolence to which Russians are but too greatly inclined, especially when their existence is assured.....

Nevertheless, the affairs of Akím and his wife throve very well; they lived in concord, and bore the reputation of being an exemplary married pair. But, like the squirrel which is cleaning its nose at the very moment when the arrow is aimed at it, a man has no foreboding of his own disaster—and suddenly down he crashes, as though on the ice....

One autumn evening a merchant with dry-goods stopped at Akím's inn. He was making his way, by devious roads, with two loaded kibítkas, from Moscow to Khárkoff; he was one of those peddlers whom the wives and daughters of landed proprietors sometimes await with so much impatience. With this peddler, already an elderly man, were travelling two comrades, or, to put it more accurately, two workmen—one pale, thin, hump-backed, the other a stately, handsome young fellow of twenty. They ordered supper, then sat down to drink tea; the peddler invited the landlord and landlady to drink a cup with him—and they did not refuse. A conversation was speedily under way between the two old men (Akím had seen his fifty-sixth birthday); the peddler was making inquiries concerning the neighbouring landed proprietors,—and no one could impart to him all necessary details about them better than could Akím. The hump-backed labourer kept continually going out to look at the carts, and at last took himself off to sleep; Avdótya was left to chat with the other labourer.... She sat beside him and talked little, and chiefly listened to what he narrated to her; but evidently his remarks pleased her; her face grew animated, a flush played over her cheeks, and she laughed quite often and readily. The young labourer sat almost motionless, with his curly head bent toward the table; he spoke softly without raising his voice, and without haste; on the other hand his eyes, not large, but audaciously bright and blue, fairly bored into Avdótya; at first she turned away from them, then she began to gaze into his face. The young fellow's face was as fresh and smooth as a Crimean apple; he smiled frequently and drummed his white fingers on his white chin, already covered with sparse, dark down. He expressed himself after the merchant fashion, but with great ease, and with a certain careless self-confidence—and kept staring at her all the while with the same insistent and insolent look.... Suddenly he moved a little closer to her, and without changing the expression of his face in the least, he said to her: "Avdótya Aréfyevna, there 's nobody in the world nicer than you; I 'm ready to die for you, I do believe."

Avdótya laughed loudly.

"What 's the matter with thee?"—Akím asked her.

"Why, this man here is telling such absurd things,"—she said, but without any special confusion.

The old peddler grinned.