Platonida Ivanovna was unspeakably rejoiced at her
nephew’s return. There was no terrible
chance she had not imagined during his absence.
’Siberia at least!’ she muttered, sitting
rigidly still in her little room; ’at least
for a year!’ The cook too had terrified her by
the most well-authenticated stories of the disappearance
of this and that young man of the neighbourhood.
The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary
ideas in Yasha did not in the least reassure the old
lady. ’For indeed ... if you come to that,
he studies photography ...
and that’s quite enough
for them to arrest him!’ ’And behold,
here was her darling Yasha back again, safe and sound.
She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked
hollow in the face; natural enough, with no one to
look after him! but she did not venture to question
him about his journey. She asked at dinner.
’And is Kazan a fine town?’ ‘Yes,’
answered Aratov. ’I suppose they’re
all Tartars living there?’ ‘Not only Tartars.’
’And did you get a Kazan dressing-gown while
you were there?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’
With that the conversation ended.
But as soon as Aratov found himself alone in his own
room, he quickly felt as though something were enfolding
him about, as though he were once more in the power,
yes, in the power of another life, another being.
Though he had indeed said to Anna in that sudden delirious
outburst that he was in love with Clara, that saying
struck even him now as senseless and frantic.
No, he was not in love; and how could he be in love
with a dead woman, whom he had not even liked in her
lifetime, whom he had almost forgotten? No, but
he was in her power ... he no longer belonged
to himself. He was captured. So completely
captured, that he did not even attempt to free himself
by laughing at his own absurdity, nor by trying to
arouse if not a conviction, at least a hope in himself
that it would all pass, that it was nothing but nerves,
nor by seeking for proofs, nor by anything! ’If
I meet him, I will capture him,’ he recalled
those words of Clara’s Anna had repeated to
him. Well, he was captured. But was not she
dead? Yes, her body was dead ... but her soul?...
is not that immortal?... does it need corporeal organs
to show its power? Magnetism has proved to us
the influence of one living human soul over another
living human soul.... Why should not this influence
last after death, if the soul remains living?
But to what end? What can come of it? But
can we, as a rule, apprehend what is the object of
all that takes place about us? These ideas so
absorbed Aratov that he suddenly asked Platosha at
tea-time whether she believed in the immortality of
the soul. She did not for the first minute understand
what his question was, then she crossed herself and
answered. ’She should think so indeed!
The soul not immortal!’ ’And, if so, can
it have any influence after death?’ Aratov asked
again. The old lady replied that it could ...
pray for us, that is to say; at least, when it had
passed through all its ordeals, awaiting the last
dread judgment. But for the first forty days the
soul simply hovered about the place where its death
had occurred.
