A Sportsman's Notebook by Ivan Turgenev

Author:Ivan Turgenev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew

GIVE ME YOUR HAND, DEAR READER, AND COME WITH ME. THE weather is glorious; the May sky is a tender blue; the smooth young willow leaves shine as if they had been washed; the wide, even highway is all covered with that fine, red-stemmed grass which sheep crop with such enjoyment; to right and left, on the long slopes of the gentle hills, a peaceful ripple passes over the green rye; over it glide in faint outline the shadows of small clouds. In the distance are green forests, glittering pools, yellow villages; larks rise in their hundreds, sing, drop like plummets, and sit with necks outstretched on tussocks; rooks halt on the road, look at you, bow down to the earth, let you drive by, and, after a couple of hops, fly ponderously away; on the hill across the ravine there is a peasant ploughing; a roan foal, dock-tailed and wild-maned, runs on unsteady legs after his mother; you can hear his faint whinnying. We drive into a birchwood; the strong, cool smell holds you breathless with delight. We have come to a village-boundary. The coachman gets down, the horses snort, the side-horses look round, the shaft-horse flicks his tail and leans his head against the shaft-bow . . . the gate opens with a squeak. The coachman takes his seat . . . Off we go! In front of us is the village. After passing five back-yards, we turn to the right, go down into a hollow and drive out over a dam. Beyond a small pond, behind round-topped apple-trees and lilacs, we can see a wooden roof that was once red, and two chimneys; the coachman turns to the left along the fence and, to the whining, throaty barking of three aged mongrels, drives through open gates, wheels smartly around a wide courtyard, past a stable and a barn, bows gallantly to an old housekeeper who has just stepped sideways over the high threshold into the open larder-door, and stops at last before the porch of a dark little house with gleaming windows . . . We are at Tatyana Borisovna’s. And here she is herself, opening a casement and nodding her head at us . . .

Good day to you, madam!

Tatyana Borisovna is a woman of about fifty, with large, protruding gray eyes, a bluntish nose, red cheeks, and a double chin. Her face radiates warm-heartedness and affection. Once upon a time she was married, but she early became a widow. Tatyana Borisovna is a very remarkable woman. She never leaves her little estate, hardly knows her neighbors, entertains and loves young people only. She was born of a family of very poor landowners and never received any education, that’s to say, she doesn’t speak French; she has never been to Moscow—and, notwithstanding all these deficiencies, she is so simple and good, so free in feeling and thought, so little infected with the usual ailments of the ladies of the smaller gentry, that it is really impossible not to admire her .

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