The diary of a superfluous man, and other stories

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

"Pray, do us the favour to tell it,"—we replied with one voice.

Piótr Feódorovitch rose, took a candle, raised it to the portraits, and in the voice of a man who is exhibiting wild animals, "Gentlemen!" he proclaimed: "this lady is the adopted daughter of my own great-grandfather, Olga Ivánovna NN., called Lutchínoff, who died unmarried forty years ago. This gentleman,"—pointing to the portrait of the man in uniform,—"is sergeant of the Guards, Vasíly Ivánovitch Lutchínoff, who departed this life, by the will of God, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety. And this gentleman, to whom I have not the honour to be related, is a certain Pável Afanásievitch Rogatchyóff, who never served anywhere, so far as I am aware. Please to note the hole which is in his breast, in the exact place of the heart. This hole, which is, as you see, regular, and three-cornered, probably could not have happened accidentally.... Now,"—he went on in his ordinary voice,—"please to take your seats, arm yourselves with patience, and listen."

Gentlemen (he began) I descend from a fairly ancient race. I am not proud of my descent, because my ancestors were all frightful spendthrifts. This reproach, however, does not apply to my great-grandfather, Iván Andréevitch Lutchínoff,—on the contrary, he bore the reputation of being an extraordinarily penurious and even miserly man—during the last years of his life, at all events. He passed his youth in Petersburg, and was a witness of Elizavéta's reign. In Petersburg he married, and had by his wife, who was also my great-grandmother, four children—three sons, Vasíly, Iván and Pável (my grandfather), and one daughter, Natálya. In addition to these, Iván Andréevitch took into his family the daughter of a distant relative, a full and nameless orphan,—Olga Ivánovna, of whom I have already spoken. My great-grandfather's subjects were, probably, aware of his existence, because they were in the habit of sending to him (when no particular catastrophe had happened) a very considerable sum in quit-rents;—but they had never beheld his face. The village of Lutchínovko, deprived of the light of its master's countenance, was thriving,—when, all of a sudden, one fine morning, a heavy travelling carriage drove into the village, and drew up in front of the Elder's cottage. The peasants, startled by such an unprecedented event, flocked thither and beheld their master, mistress, and all the pair's offspring, with the exception of the eldest, Vasíly, who had remained in Petersburg. From that memorable day forth, and to the very day of his death, Iván Andréevitch never quitted Lutchínovko. He built himself a house, this very house in which I now have the pleasure of chatting with you; he also built the church, and began to live the life of a landed proprietor. Iván Andréevitch was a man of huge stature, gaunt, taciturn, and extremely slow in all his movements; he never wore a dressing-gown, and no one, with the exception of his valet, had ever seen him with unpowdered hair. Iván Andréevitch habitually walked with his hands clasped behind his back, slowly turning his head at every step. Every day he walked in the long linden alley, which he had planted with his own hands,—and before his death he had the satisfaction of enjoying the shade of those lindens.

Iván Andréevitch was extremely parsimonious of his words; this remarkable circumstance may serve as a proof of his taciturnity—that in the space of twenty years he never said a single word to his spouse, Anna Pávlovna. Altogether, his relations to Anna Pávlovna were of a very strange nature.—She administered all the domestic affairs, at dinner she always sat by her husband's side,—he would ruthlessly have chastised any man who presumed to utter one disrespectful word to her,—and yet he himself never spoke to her, and never touched her hand. Anna Pávlovna was a pale, timid, crushed woman; every day she prayed in church on her knees,[18] and never smiled. It was said that formerly, that is to say, before their arrival in the country, they had lived in grand style; it was said, also, that Anna Pávlovna had broken her marital vows, that her husband had found out about her fault.... However that may have been, Iván Andréevitch, even when he lay dying, did not become reconciled to her. She never left him during his last illness; but he seemed not to notice her. One night, Anna Pávlovna was sitting in Iván Andréevitch's bedroom; he was tortured with insomnia; the shrine-lamp was burning in front of the holy picture; my great-grandfather's servant, Yúditch, concerning whom I shall have a couple of words to say to you hereafter, had left the room. Anna Pávlovna rose, crossed the chamber, and flung herself, sobbing, on her knees before her husband's bed, tried to say something—and stretched out her arms.... Iván Andréevitch looked at her—and shouted in a weak but firm voice: "Man!" The servant entered. Anna Pávlovna hastily rose to her feet, and returned, reeling, to her place.

Iván Andréevitch's children were extremely afraid of him. They grew up in the country, and were witnesses of Iván Andréevitch's strange behaviour to his wife. They all passionately loved Anna Pávlovna, but dared not express their love. She herself seemed to shun them.... You remember my grandfather, gentlemen: to the day of his death, he always used to go about on tiptoe, and he spoke in a whisper .... that 's what habit will do! My grandfather and his brother Iván Ivánovitch were plain, kind, peaceable and melancholy people; my grand'tante Natálya married a coarse, stupid man, as you know, and until her death cherished for him a dumb, servile, sheep-like love; but their brother Vasíly was not like that.

I think I have told you that Iván Andréevitch left him in Petersburg. He was twenty years old at the time. His father confided him to the care of a distant relative, a man no longer young, a bachelor and a frightful Voltairian.

Vasíly grew up, and entered the service. He was small of stature, but well built and extremely agile; he spoke French splendidly, and was renowned for his skill at fighting with the broadsword. He was considered one of the most brilliant young men of the beginning of Katherine II's reign. My father often told me that he knew more than one old woman who could not mention Vasíly Ivánovitch Lutchínoff without heartfelt emotion. Picture to yourself a man gifted with remarkable strength of will, passionate and calculating, patient and daring, secretive to the last degree and—according to the words of all his contemporaries—bewitchingly, enchantingly amiable. He had neither conscience nor good-nature nor honour, although no one could call him a positively bad man. He was selfish—but knew how to conceal his selfishness, and was passionately fond of independence. When Vasíly Ivánovitch used, smilingly, to screw up his black eyes, when he wanted to fascinate any one, they say that it was impossible to resist him—and even people who were convinced of the coldness and hardness of his spirit more than once surrendered to the bewitching power of his influence. He zealously served himself, and made others toil also for his benefit, and always succeeded in everything, because he never lost his head, did not disdain flattery as a means, and understood how to flatter.

Ten years after Iván Andréevitch settled in the country, he came to Lutchínovko as a brilliant officer of the Guards, for four months,—and in that space of time succeeded in turning the head even of the surly old man, his father. It is strange! Iván Andréevitch listened with delight to his son's tales of his conquests. His brothers were dumb in his presence, and admired him as a superior being. And even Anna Pávlovna herself came to love him almost more than all her other children, who were so sincerely devoted to her.

Vasíly Ivánovitch came to the country, in the first place, in order to see his relatives; but, in the second place also, in order to get as much money as possible out of his father. He had lived sumptuously and kept open house in Petersburg, and had contracted a multitude of debts. It was not easy for him to reconcile himself to his parent's stinginess, and, although Iván Andréevitch gave him for his trip alone more money, in all probability, than he gave all his other children in the space of the twenty years which they spent in the paternal house, yet Vasíly stuck to the familiar Russian rule: "Take all you can get!"

Iván Andréevitch had a servant, Yúditch by name, as tall, gaunt, and taciturn a man as his master. They say that this Yúditch was, in part, the cause of the strange behaviour of Iván Andréevitch to Anna Pávlovna: they say that it was he who discovered the guilty liaison of my great-grandmother with one of my great-grandfather's best friends. Probably Yúditch deeply repented of his ill-judged zeal, because it would be difficult to conceive of a more kind-hearted man. His memory is held sacred to this day by all my house-serfs. Yúditch enjoyed the unbounded confidence of my great-grandfather. At that period, landed proprietors had money, but did not hand it over to loan institutions for safe-keeping, but kept it themselves in coffers, in cellars, and the like. Iván Andréevitch kept all his money in a huge iron-bound coffer, which stood under the head of his bed. The key to this coffer was handed over to Yúditch. Every evening, when he went to bed, Iván Andréevitch ordered this chest to be opened in his presence, tapped all the tightly-stuffed sacks in turn with his cane, and on Saturdays, he and Yúditch untied the sacks and carefully counted over the money.