Nuwe stories - Turgenev

Knock Knock Knock

Tyeglev confined himself to observing that I had nothing to do with it -  - that something else had guided my hand -  - and this only showed how little I knew him. His voice, strangely calm and even, sounded close to my ear. “But you do not know me,” he added. “I saw you smile yesterday when I spoke of the strength of my will. You will come to know me -  - and you will remember my words.

the world.
“There are indeed,” I assented.
Yes, someone has said truly of suicides: until they carry out their design, no one believes them; and when they do, no one regrets them.

The Torrents of Spring

Skittles he played in masterly fashion; as he threw the ball, he put himself into amazingly heroic postures, with artistic play of the muscles, with artistic flourish and shake of the leg. In his own way he was an athlete — and was superbly built! His hands, too, were so white and handsome, and he wiped them on such a sumptuous, gold - striped, Indian bandana!

But Pantaleone assumed an air as though taking part in the preliminaries of duels was for him the most everyday affair: probably he was assisted at this juncture by the recollections of his theatrical career, and he played the part of second simply as a part.

A constrained silence followed…. No one moved. Pantaleone uttered a faint moan.

‘Is it your wish to go on?’ said Dönhof.

‘Why did you shoot in the air?’ inquired Sanin.

‘That’s nothing to do with you.’

‘Will you shoot in the air the second time?’ Sanin asked again.

‘Possibly: I don’t know.’

Maria Nikolaevna was dressed that day very much ‘to her advantage,’ as our grandmothers used to say. She wore a pink glacé silk dress, with sleeves à la Fontange, and a big diamond in each ear.

Snake! ah, she’s a snake!’ Sanin was thinking meanwhile; ‘but what a lovely snake!’

Then the going home to his own country, the poisoned, the devastated life, the petty interests and petty cares, bitter and fruitless regret, and as bitter and fruitless apathy, a punishment not apparent, but of every minute, continuous, like some trivial but incurable disease, the payment farthing by farthing of the debt, which can never be settled….

he described his life, solitary, childless, joyless; he implored her to understand the grounds that had induced him to address her, not to let him carry to the grave the bitter sense of his own wrongdoing,