The Created Legend by Fyodor Sologub

Author:Fyodor Sologub
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Russia -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-12-27T22:26:59+00:00

XVIII

Tri­ro­dov at last real­ized that he was in love with Elis­aveta. He knew too well the nature of this de­li­cious and pain­ful emo­tion. It had come again and once more filled the world with light. He had looked en­ig­mat­ic­ally upon this broad, etern­ally in­ac­cess­ible world, full of past memor­ies and past people. But his love of Elis­aveta meant his love and ac­cept­ance of the world, the whole world.

This emo­tion aroused dis­may in Tri­ro­dov. To the per­plex­it­ies of the past, not yet thrown off his shoulders, and to those of the present be­gun with a strange, as yet un­meas­ured in­flu­ence, were to be ad­ded the per­plex­it­ies of the fu­ture, of a new and un­ex­pec­ted bond. And was not love in it­self a means for real­iz­ing one’s dreams?

Tri­ro­dov made ef­fort to crush this new love in him­self, and to for­get Elis­aveta. He tried to keep away from the Rameyevs, not to come to their house—but with each day his love only in­creased. His thoughts and mus­ings of Elis­aveta grew more and more per­sist­ent. They be­came in­ter­woven with one an­oth­er and graf­ted them­selves on to his soul. More and more a pen­cil in his hand guided it­self to out­line on pa­per now her aus­tere pro­file—softened by the youth­ful joy of lib­er­a­tion—now her simple cos­tume, now a rap­id sketch of her shoulders and neck, or the knot of her broad belt.

Again and again a strong hope awakened in him that he might strangle and crush the gentle blos­som of his de­li­cious love. Sev­er­al days had already passed without his vis­it­ing the Rameyevs. He did not even come on those days on which they grew ac­cus­tomed to ex­pect him.

Elis­aveta thought this a de­lib­er­ate in­ci­vil­ity, and it hurt her feel­ings. But whenev­er Pio­tr ab­used him she de­fen­ded him. Her ima­gin­a­tion began to evoke more and more fre­quently the fea­tures of his face: his deep, ob­serving glance; his proud, iron­ic smile; his pale face, clean-shaven like an act­or’s, and cold like a mask. How sweetly and how bit­terly she was in love with him—her sweet vis­ion be­trayed it­self in the gleam in her eyes.

Rameyev had grown fond of Tri­ro­dov, and he missed his pres­ence. He found it a pleas­ant di­ver­sion to chat with Tri­ro­dov, and even to wrangle with him some­times. He made two calls at Tri­ro­dov’s house, and did not find him in. Rameyev wrote sev­er­al in­vit­a­tions. He re­ceived cour­teous but evas­ive replies ex­press­ing re­gret at not be­ing able to come.

One even­ing Rameyev growled at Pio­tr:

“He stopped com­ing be­cause of your rude­ness.” Pio­tr replied sharply:

“Let him stay away. I’m very glad.”

Rameyev looked at him sternly, and said:

“But I’m not glad. There’s one in­ter­est­ing man in this wil­der­ness, and we fright­en him away.”

Pio­tr ex­cused him­self. He felt un­easy. He walked out of the house alone, aim­lessly, wish­ing only to es­cape his own re­l­at­ives.

The sun­set blazed for a long time, tor­men­ted it­self with its un­will­ing­ness to die; it lingered on as if it were its last day, and at last ex­pired. The whole sky be­came blue—ex­quis­itely blue. But to the north­w­est an edge of it was trans­lu­cently green.

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