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But was not she dead? Yes; her body was dead … but how about her soul?–Was not that immortal … did it require bodily organs to manifest its power? Magnetism has demonstrated to us the influence of the living human soul upon another living human soul…. Why should not that influence be continued after death, if the soul remains alive?–But with what object? What might be the result of this?–But do we, in general, realise the object of everything which goes on around us?

These reflections occupied Aratoff to such a degree that at tea he suddenly asked Platosha whether she believed in the immortality of the soul. She did not understand at first what it was he had asked; but afterward she crossed herself and replied, “of course. How could the soul be otherwise than immortal?”

“But if that is so, can it act after death?” Aratoff put a second question.

The old woman replied that it could … that is to say, it can pray for us; when it shall have passed through all sorts of tribulations, and is awaiting the Last Judgment. But during the first forty days it only hovers around the spot where its death occurred.

“During the first forty days?”

“Yes; and after that come its tribulations.”[66]

FOOTNOTE: [66] See note on page 24.–TRANSLATOR.

Aratoff was surprised at his aunt’s erudition, and went off to his own room.–And again he felt the same thing, that same power upon him. The power was manifested thus–that the image of Clara incessantly presented itself to him, in its most minute details,–details which he did not seem to have observed during her lifetime; he saw … he saw her fingers, her nails, the bands of hair on her cheeks below her temples, a small mole under the left eye; he saw the movement of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows … and what sort of a gait she had, and how she held her head a little on the right side … he saw everything!–He did not admire all this at all; he simply could not help thinking about it and seeing it.–Yet he did not dream about her during the first night after his return … he was very weary and slept like one slain. On the other hand, no sooner did he awake than she again entered his room, and there she remained, as though she had been its owner; just as though she had purchased for herself that right by her voluntary death, without asking him or requiring his permission.

He took her photograph; he began to reproduce it, to enlarge it. Then it occurred to him to arrange it for the stereoscope. It cost him a great deal of trouble, but at last he succeeded. He fairly started when he beheld through the glass her figure which had acquired the semblance of bodily substance. But that figure was grey, as though covered with dust … and moreover, the eyes … the eyes still gazed aside, as though they were averting themselves. He began to gaze at them for a long, long time, as though expecting that they might, at any moment, turn themselves in his direction … he even puckered up his eyes deliberately … but the eyes remained motionless, and the whole figure assumed the aspect of a doll. He went away, threw himself into an arm-chair, got out the leaf which he had torn from her diary, with the underlined words, and thought: “They say that people in love kiss the lines which have been written by a beloved hand; but I have no desire to do that–and the chirography appears to me ugly into the bargain. But in that line lies my condemnation.”–At this point there flashed into his mind the promise he had made to Anna about the article. He seated himself at his table, and set about writing it; but everything he wrote turned out so rhetorical … worst of all, so artificial … just as though he did not believe in what he was writing, or in his own feelings … and Clara herself seemed to him unrecognisable, incomprehensible! She would not yield herself to him.