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A poem by Ivan Turgenev |
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The Last Meeting |
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Title: The Last Meeting Author: Ivan Turgenev [More Titles by Turgenev] Translated From The Russian
Many years passed.... And lo! on entering the town where he lived I learned that he was hopelessly ill, and wished to see me. I went to him, I entered his chamber.... Our glances met. I hardly recognised him. O God! How disease had changed him! Yellow, shrivelled, with his head completely bald, and a narrow, grey beard, he was sitting in nothing but a shirt, cut out expressly.... He could not bear the pressure of the lightest garment. Abruptly he extended to me his frightfully-thin hand, which looked as though it had been gnawed away, with an effort whispered several incomprehensible words--whether of welcome or of reproach, who knows? His exhausted chest heaved; over the contracted pupils of his small, inflamed eyes two scanty tears of martyrdom flowed down. My heart sank within me.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily dropping my eyes in the presence of that horror and deformity, I also put out my hand. But it seemed to me that it was not his hand which grasped mine. It seemed to me as though there were sitting between us a tall, quiet, white woman. A long veil enveloped her from head to foot. Her deep, pale eyes gazed nowhere; her pale, stern lips uttered no sound.... That woman joined our hands.... She reconciled us forever. Yes.... It was Death who had reconciled us.... April, 1878. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |