Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  Among the things on Karl Ivanych’s shelf was one that recalls him to me more than any other. It was a cardboard disc on a wooden support, up and down which the disc could be moved on pegs. Glued to the disc were caricatures of a lady and a hairdresser. Karl Ivanych was good at gluing things and had devised the disc himself to protect his weak eyes from bright sunlight.

  As if it were today, I see before me a tall figure in a quilted dressing gown and a red cap with thin grey hair sticking out from under. He’s sitting next to a small table on which the cardboard disc with the hairdresser stands, casting a shadow over his face. He’s holding a book in one hand, while the other is resting on the arm of his chair. Beside him on the table are a watch with a hunter painted on the dial, a checked handkerchief, a round black snuffbox, a green spectacle case and a pair of candle snuffers on a little tray. It all sits so neatly, so tidily in place, that you might conclude from the order alone that Karl Ivanych’s conscience is clear and his soul at peace.

  After running around the salon downstairs to your heart’s content, you would creep up to the classroom on tiptoe to take a look. Karl Ivanych would be sitting alone in his armchair reading one of his favourite books with an expression of calm majesty. Sometimes I would catch him when he wasn’t reading, his spectacles resting on the tip of his long aquiline nose, his blue, half-closed eyes gazing with a special sort of expression, and a wistful smile on his lips. The room would be silent, except for his regular breathing and the chiming of the watch with the hunter.

  He wouldn’t notice me, and I would stand in the doorway and think, ‘Poor, poor old man! There are many of us, we play and have fun, but he’s completely by himself with no one to be affectionate to him. He’s right when he says that he’s an orphan. And the story of his life is such an awful one! I remember his telling Nikolay about it – it would be terrible to be in his position!’ And you would become so sad that you would go over and take his hand and say, ‘Lieber Karl Ivanych!’8 He liked it when I talked to him that way and always petted me and was clearly moved.

  On the middle wall hung the geography maps, most of them badly tattered but skilfully glued from behind by Karl Ivanych. On one side of the third wall with the doorway downstairs in the middle hung two rulers, one nicked and ours, and the other quite new and his own and used more for urging us on than for drawing lines. On the other side of the same wall was a blackboard on which our major transgressions were marked with circles and our minor ones with crosses. To the left of the blackboard was the corner in which we were made to kneel.

  What memories I have of that corner! I remember the stove vent and the noise it made whenever you opened it. You would kneel in the corner until your knees and back started to ache and think, ‘Karl Ivanych has forgotten all about me. He’s probably calmly sitting in his soft armchair reading his hydrostatics, but what about me?’ And to remind him, you would quietly start to open and close the vent or peel the plaster from the wall. But if too large a piece suddenly fell to the floor with a thud, the fright alone really would be worse than any punishment. You would glance back at Karl Ivanych, but he would be sitting there with a book in his hand as if he hadn’t noticed anything.

  In the middle of the room stood a table covered with a worn black oilcloth through which the table’s edge, picked by penknives, stuck out in several places. Around the table were some stools, unpainted but polished from long use. The room’s fourth wall was taken up by three windows. This was the view from them: directly below was the driveway, in which every hollow, every stone, every rut had long been familiar and dear to me; across the driveway was a mown avenue of lindens, behind which parts of a wattle fence could be seen; and beyond the fence was a meadow with a threshing barn on one side and a wood on the other with the watchman’s hut in the distance. Partly visible in the window on the right was the terrace where the grown-ups usually gathered before dinner.9 While Karl Ivanych corrected the pages of dictation, you would gaze in that direction and see Mama’s dark head and someone else’s back and hear muffled talk and laughter, and it would vex you that you couldn’t be there, too, and you would think, ‘When shall I at last be grown up and done with lessons and not always sitting over dialogues, but be with the ones I love?’ Your vexation would turn to sadness and, goodness knows why or about what, you would fall into such a reverie that you wouldn’t even hear Karl Ivanych fuming over your mistakes …

  Then Karl Ivanych took off his dressing gown, put on a blue tailcoat with pads and gathers at the shoulders, adjusted his cravat in the mirror and led us downstairs to greet Mama.

  TWO

  Maman

  Mama was sitting in the drawing room pouring tea. In one hand she held the teapot, and in the other the tap of the samovar, from which the water ran over the lip of the teapot onto the tray. But even though she was staring at it, she noticed neither that nor our coming into the room.

  So many memories of the past rise up when you try to resurrect in your imagination the features of a beloved being, that peering through those memories you see the features dimly, as if through tears – the tears of imagination. When I try to recall Mama as she was then, I see only her brown eyes that always expressed the same gentleness and love, the mole on her neck just below where the little hairs curl, her embroidered white collar and her thin, tender hand that caressed me so often and that I kissed so much. But her general expression eludes me.

  To the left of the sofa was an old English grand piano. Sitting at it was my dark-haired sister Lyubochka, playing études by Clementi10 with obvious effort, her pink little fingers having just been rinsed in cold water. She was eleven. She was dressed in a short muslin shift and white pantalettes with lace ruffles and could only do octaves in arpeggios. Marya Ivanovna, wearing a blue padded jacket and a mobcap with pink ribbons, was seated alongside, but turned towards her with an angry red face that assumed an even sterner expression the moment Karl Ivanych came in. She glared at him and, ignoring his bow, continued to tap her foot while counting, ‘Un, deux, trois! Un, deux, trois!’ even louder and more insistently than before.

  Karl Ivanych paid exactly no attention to any of that, but went over to Mama with a German greeting, just as he always did. She came to with a start, shook her head, as if hoping by that movement to dispel sad thoughts, and offered her hand to Karl Ivanych, who kissed it while she kissed his wrinkled temple.

  ‘Ich danke,11 lieber Karl Ivanych,’ and continuing in German, she asked, ‘Did the children sleep well?’

  Karl Ivanych was deaf in one ear and now, because of the noise of the piano, he couldn’t hear anything. He bent closer to the sofa, leaned with his hand on the table while standing on one foot, raised his cap with a smile that at the time seemed to me the height of refinement, and said, ‘Will you forgive me, Natalya Nikolayevna?’

  So as not to catch cold from his bare head, Karl Ivanych never took off his red cap, although whenever he came into the drawing room he would ask permission to leave it on.

  ‘Keep it on, Karl Ivanych. I was asking, did the children sleep well?’ maman repeated quite loudly, moving closer to him.

  But again hearing nothing, he covered his bald spot with the red cap and smiled even more sweetly.

  ‘Stop for a moment, Mimi,’ maman said to Marya Ivanovna with a smile. ‘We can’t hear anything.’

  When Mama smiled, as fine as her face was, it was made incomparably better, and everything around seemed more cheerful. If in the difficult moments of my life I could have had just a glimpse of that smile, I would never have known the meaning of sorrow. It seems to me that what is called beauty in a face lies entirely in the smile: if it adds charm to the face, the face is beautiful; if it leaves the face unchanged, the face is plain; and if it spoils the face, the face is ugly.

  After greeting me, maman took my head in her hands, tilted it back, looked intently at me, and asked, ‘Have you been crying?’

  I didn’t answer. She kissed my eyelids and a
sked in German, ‘What were you crying about?’

  Whenever she talked to us in an intimate way, she always spoke that language, which she knew perfectly.

  ‘I was crying in my sleep, maman,’ I said, recalling my made-up dream in all its detail and involuntarily shuddering at the thought.

  Karl Ivanych confirmed my words, but said nothing about the dream itself. After a few remarks about the weather – a conversation in which Mimi also took part – maman put six lumps of sugar on the tray for a few appreciated servants, got up and went over to her embroidery frame, which stood by the window.

  ‘Well, children, run along to Papa now, and tell him to be sure to come to me before he goes out to the barn.’

  The music, counting and glaring resumed, and we went to see Papa. After passing through the room that since my grandfather’s day has been called the ‘waiters’ room’, we entered the study.

  THREE

  Papa

  Papa was standing by his desk and pointing at some envelopes, papers and a pile of money, while heatedly explaining something to the steward Yakov Mikhailov, who stood in his usual place between the door and the barometer, his hands clasped behind his back and his fingers rapidly moving in various directions.

  The more exercised Papa became, the more rapidly the fingers moved, and conversely, whenever Papa fell silent, the fingers would stop moving too; but whenever Yakov started to talk, the fingers would become extremely agitated and desperately begin to leap in every direction. It seemed to me that you could tell Yakov’s innermost thoughts from those movements, even though his face was invariably calm, conveying awareness of his own merit but also of his dependence – that is, ‘I’m right, but it will be as you wish.’

  On seeing us, Papa merely said, ‘Wait, I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  And with a movement of his head he indicated the door for one of us to close it.

  ‘Good Lord, Yakov! What is the matter with you today?’ he continued to the steward, shrugging a shoulder, a habit of his. ‘This envelope with the eight hundred roubles …’

  Yakov moved the abacus, cast off eight hundred, and gazed into the distance, waiting for what would come next.

  ‘… is for expenses while I’m away. Understood? You should get a thousand roubles from the mill … Is that right or not? You should get eight thousand from the trustee bank12 on the mortgages. For the hay, of which, by your own calculations, you can sell a hundred and twenty-five tons, you should get three thousand – I’m reckoning at twenty-four roubles a ton. What will be your total then? Twelve thousand? Is that right or not?’

  ‘Quite right, sir,’ Yakov said.

  But from the rapid movement of his fingers, I could tell that he wanted to object. Papa interrupted him.

  ‘Well, of that money you’ll send ten thousand to the Council for Petrovskoye. Now the money in the office,’ Papa continued (Yakov returned the previous twelve and cast off twenty-one thousand), ‘you’ll bring to me and show as an expenditure as of today.’ Yakov removed the sum and tipped the abacus, very likely indicating thereby that the twenty-one thousand would also disappear. ‘But the money in this envelope you’ll convey from me to the person indicated thereon.’

  I was standing next to the desk and glanced at the inscription. It said, ‘For Karl Ivanovich Mauer’.

  Very likely noticing I had read something that didn’t concern me, Papa put his hand on my shoulder and with light pressure indicated movement away from the desk. I didn’t know if it was an affectionate gesture or a reproof so, just in case, I kissed the large, veiny hand resting on my shoulder.

  ‘It will be done, sir,’ Yakov said. ‘What are your instructions with respect to the Khabarovka money?’

  Khabarovka was maman’s village.

  ‘To leave it in the office and not to use it for any purpose without my orders.’

  Yakov was silent for a few seconds, and then his fingers started to wriggle with increasing speed and, replacing the expression of stolid obedience with which he had listened to his master’s instructions with his more usual one of crafty intelligence, he moved the abacus closer and began to speak.

  ‘Allow me to inform you, Pyotr Aleksandrych, that it will be as you wish, but we won’t be able to pay the Council on time. You were pleased to say,’ he continued after a pause, ‘that there will be money from the mortgages, mill and hay …’ Entering each of those items, he cast them off on the abacus. ‘But I’m afraid that our calculations may be mistaken,’ he added, after falling silent for a moment and looking at Papa with a gravely thoughtful expression.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, if you’ll allow me, with respect to the mill, the miller has been to see me twice already to ask for a delay and swears by God and Christ that he has no money, and is here now. Would you like to speak to him yourself?’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Papa asked, indicating with a shake of his head that he had no wish to talk to the miller.

  ‘The usual thing – that there hasn’t been any grain to mill, that there was a little money, but he put it all into the dam. So if we leave him out, sire, how, once again, will we come up with the total? You were pleased to speak of the mortgages, but I think I’ve already reported to you that our money’s sitting there and won’t be released soon. The other day I sent a shipment of flour to Ivan Afanasevich in town with a note about the matter. So he replies, once again, that he would be glad to do something for you, but that the matter isn’t in his hands and that it’s clear from everything that you’re unlikely to get your payment, even in two months. With respect to the hay, if you’ll permit me, once again, let’s assume that we do sell it for three thousand …’

  He cast off three thousand on the abacus and was silent for a moment as he looked back and forth between it and Papa with an expression that said, ‘Well, you yourself see how little it is!’

  ‘But even if we do sell it for that, we’ll lose money on it again, as you yourself know, if I may say so …’

  It was obvious that he had a large store of other arguments, which is probably why Papa cut him off.

  ‘I won’t change my orders,’ he said, ‘but if there really is going to be a delay in getting the money, then the only thing you can do is take whatever you need from the Khabarovka account.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  It was clear from the expression on his face and from his fingers that the last instruction gave Yakov great satisfaction.

  Yakov was a serf and an extremely zealous and devoted man. And like all good stewards he was stinting to a fault on his master’s behalf, although with the strangest notions about his master’s interests. He constantly worried about increasing the property of his master at the expense of that of his mistress, endeavouring to show that it was necessary to use all the income from her estate for Petrovskoye (the village in which we lived). He was now triumphant, since he had fully accomplished his goal.

  After greeting us, Papa said that we had been twiddling our thumbs in the country long enough, that we were no longer little boys, and that it was time for us to begin serious study.

  ‘You already know, I think, that I’m going to Moscow tonight and taking you with me,’ he said. ‘You’ll live at Grandmother’s, and maman will remain behind with the girls. And be aware that the only thing that will be a comfort to her will be to know that your studies are going well and that people are satisfied with you.’

  Even though we had anticipated something unusual from the preparations that had been evident for the last few days, the news had a terrible effect on us. Volodya turned red and passed on Mama’s message in a trembling voice.

  ‘So that’s what my dream portended!’ I thought. ‘Heaven forbid that anything worse should happen.’

  I felt very, very sorry for Mama, but at the same time the idea that we were now big made me glad.

  ‘If we’re leaving today, then there probably won’t be any mor
e lessons, which is splendid!’ I thought. ‘Although I do feel sorry for Karl Ivanych. They’re probably letting him go, or else they wouldn’t have prepared an envelope for him … It would be so much better if we could just go on studying here for ever and not part with Mama or hurt poor Karl Ivanych’s feelings. He’s so unhappy as it is!’

  Such were the thoughts that flitted through my mind, but I continued to stand where I was and stare at the black bows of my pumps.

  After exchanging a few words with Karl Ivanych about the falling barometer, and ordering Yakov not to feed the dogs so he could go out after dinner for a farewell sounding of the young hounds, Papa sent us, against my expectation, off to our lessons again, consoling us, however, with the promise to take us hunting with him.

  On the way upstairs I ran out to the terrace. Lying by the door in the sunshine with her eyes closed was my father’s favourite Borzoi, Milka.

  ‘Dear Milka,’ I said, petting her and kissing her on the muzzle. ‘We’re leaving today. Goodbye! We’ll never see each other again!’