’Dem Fiktov kann ich nicht kommandiren, Ivan
Demianitch. Sie wissen wohl!’ grumbled
Eleonora Karpovna.
I looked at Fustov, as though wishing finally to arrive
at what induced him to visit such people... but at
that instant there came into the room a tall girl
in a black dress, the elder daughter of Mr. Ratsch,
to whom Fustov had referred.... I perceived the
explanation of my friend’s frequent visits.
There is somewhere, I remember, in Shakespeare, something
about ’a white dove in a flock of black crows’;
that was just the impression made on me by the girl,
who entered the room. Between the world surrounding
her and herself there seemed to be too little in common;
she herself seemed secretly bewildered and wondering
how she had come there. All the members of Mr.
Ratsch’s family looked self-satisfied, simple-hearted,
healthy creatures; her beautiful, but already careworn,
face bore the traces of depression, pride and morbidity.
The others, unmistakable plebeians, were unconstrained
in their manners, coarse perhaps, but simple; but
a painful uneasiness was manifest in all her indubitably
aristocratic nature. In her very exterior there
was no trace of the type characteristic of the German
race; she recalled rather the children of the south.
The excessively thick, lustreless black hair, the hollow,
black, lifeless but beautiful eyes, the low, prominent
brow, the aquiline nose, the livid pallor of the smooth
skin, a certain tragic line near the delicate lips,
and in the slightly sunken cheeks, something abrupt,
and at the same time helpless in the movements, elegance
without gracefulness... in Italy all this would not
have struck me as exceptional, but in Moscow, near
the Pretchistensky boulevard, it simply astonished
me! I got up from my seat on her entrance; she
flung me a swift, uneasy glance, and dropping her
black eyelashes, sat down near the window ‘like
Tatiana.’ (Pushkin’s Oniegin was
then fresh in every one’s mind.) I glanced at
Fustov, but my friend was standing with his back to
me, taking a cup of tea from the plump hands of Eleonora
Karpovna. I noticed further that the girl as she
came in seemed to bring with her a breath of slight
physical chillness.... ’What a statue!’
was my thought.
‘Piotr Gavrilitch,’ thundered Mr. Ratsch,
turning to me, ’let me introduce you to my...
to my... my number one, ha, ha, ha! to Susanna Ivanovna!’
I bowed in silence, and thought at once: ’Why,
the name too is not the same sort as the others,’
while Susanna rose slightly, without smiling or loosening
her tightly clasped hands.
