by Leo Tolstoy
‘Enough, little master, don’t cry … Forgive me for being so stupid. I was wrong. Please forgive me, my darling. Here’s something for you.’
She took from under her shawl a cornet made of red paper with two caramels and a dried fig in it, and handed it to me with a trembling hand. I didn’t have the strength to look that kind old woman in the face. Turning away, I accepted her gift and my tears flowed all the more abundantly, although no longer from rage but from love and shame.
FOURTEEN
Parting
Around noon the day after the events I’ve described, the barouche and britzka were standing by the front steps. Nikolay was dressed for the road; that is, his trousers were tucked into his boots, and his old frock coat was tightly bound with a sash. He stood in the britzka, stowing overcoats and pillows under the seat. When the seat seemed too high, he sat on the pillows and bounced up and down to flatten them.
‘Take pity, Nikolay Dmitrich, and see if you can’t put the master’s travelling cheest in with you,’ said Papa’s valet, sticking his head out of the barouche and breathing hard. ‘It isn’t big.’
‘You should have said something before, Mikhey Ivanych,’ Nikolay shot back in vexation, hurling a bundle to the floor of the britzka with all his strength. ‘As God is my witness, my head’s already spinning, without you and your cheests,’ he added, pushing his cap back and wiping large beads of sweat from his sunburnt forehead.
Standing around the front steps and chatting among themselves were bareheaded servants in frock coats or in peasant caftans and shirts, women in coarse cotton frocks and striped kerchiefs with babies in their arms, and barefoot little children. One of the drivers, a humpbacked old man wearing a winter cap and heavy coat, held the shaft of the barouche in one hand, tapped it with the other, and gravely examined its play. The other driver – a portly young fellow in a white shirt with red calico gussets and a black felt hat with a fez-shaped crown that he knocked from ear to ear as he scratched his blond curls – put his own coat up on the coach box, tossed the reins up there, too, and lashed out with his plaited whip from time to time, while looking first at his boots and then at the coachmen lubricating the britzka. While one strained to lift the britzka, the other leaned over a wheel and carefully smeared the axle and sleeve and even all around underneath, so that none of the leftover birch tar would go unused. Jaded post horses of various colours stood by the iron fence swishing the flies away with their tails. Splaying their shaggy, swollen legs, a few rolled their eyes up and dozed, while others nuzzled each other from boredom or nibbled at the tough leaves and stems of the dark-green ferns growing near the steps. Several Borzois lay panting in the sun or moved about in the shade under the barouche and britzka to lick the tallow from their axles. The air was filled with a kind of dusty haze, and the horizon was a lilac-grey, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A strong westerly wind raised columns of dust on the road and fields, bent the crowns of the tall lindens and birches in the garden, and carried their falling yellow leaves a good distance away. I sat by the window and waited impatiently for all the preparations to end.
Even when everyone had gathered by the round table in the drawing room to spend a last few minutes together,35 I still had no idea how sad it would be. Thoughts of the most idle kind wandered through my mind. I wondered which driver would go in the britzka and which in the barouche, and who would ride with Papa and who with Karl Ivanych, and why they would certainly want to wrap me up in a scarf and a long quilted coat.
‘Am I really so delicate? I’m not likely to freeze. If they would just hurry up and finish so we can get going.’
‘Whom shall I give the children’s linen list to?’ Natalya Savishna asked maman, entering the room with a tear-stained face and the list in her hand.
‘Give it to Nikolay,’ maman said, ‘and then come and say goodbye to the children.’
The old woman was going to say something else, but suddenly stopped, covered her face with her handkerchief and left the room with a wave of her hand. It made my heart ache a little to see that gesture, but my eagerness to get going overpowered that feeling, and instead I listened with complete indifference to Father’s conversation with Mama. They were talking about things that were obviously of no interest to either of them: what needed to be purchased for the house, what to tell Princess Sophie or Mme Julie, and whether the road would be good.
Then Foka came to the doorway, and in exactly the same voice with which he announced ‘Dinner is ready,’ he said, ‘The horses are ready.’ I noticed maman shudder and turn pale at the news, as if it had caught her by surprise.
Foka was told to close all the doors in the room. That amused me – ‘as if we’re all hiding from someone’.
After everyone was seated, Foka, too, sat down on the edge of a chair, but no sooner had he done so than a door creaked and Natalya Savishna hurried in and, without lifting her eyes, found refuge by the door on the same chair with Foka. As if it were today I see Foka’s bald head and impassive, wrinkled face, and the kindly, bent figure of Natalya Savishna in a mobcap that doesn’t quite cover her grey hair. They’re pressed together on the chair and it’s awkward for both of them.
I continued to be carefree and impatient. The ten seconds we sat there with the doors closed seemed like an hour to me. Finally we got up, crossed ourselves, and began to say our farewells. Papa embraced maman and kissed her several times.
‘That’s enough, my dear,’ Papa said. ‘After all, we’re not parting forever.’
‘All the same, it’s sad!’ maman said, her voice breaking.
When I heard that voice and saw her trembling lips and eyes filled with tears, I forgot about everything else and became so sad and distressed and afraid that I felt it would be better to run away than to say goodbye to her. I realized at that moment that in embracing Father she was already saying farewell to us.
She kissed Volodya and made the sign of the cross over him so many times that I pushed forward, assuming that she would now turn to me, but she kept blessing him and pressing him to her breast. Finally, I embraced her and, clinging to her, cried and cried, aware only of my grief.
When we went to get in the carriages, the entryway was filled with a tedious throng of servants waiting to say goodbye. Their ‘I beg your hand, sir’ and noisy kisses on the shoulder36 and the smell of lard in their hair aroused in me the feeling nearest to regret in touchy people. Under the sway of that feeling, I kissed Natalya Savishna on her mobcap with unusual coldness as she said goodbye to me, completely in tears.
It’s strange that I see the faces of the servants as if it were today and could draw them all in the minutest detail, yet maman’s face and stance have completely vanished from my imagination, perhaps because I couldn’t bring myself to look at her the whole time. It seemed to me that if I did look, her distress and mine would reach intolerable extremes.
I threw myself into the barouche before anyone else and took a place on the back seat. I couldn’t see anything on the other side of the raised hood, but all the same some instinct told me maman was there.
‘Shall I take a look at her again or not? Well, one last time!’ I said to myself and leaned out of the barouche towards the front steps. At the same time, maman came up to the barouche on the other side with the same idea and called my name. Hearing her voice behind me, I turned around, but so quickly that we bumped heads. She smiled sadly and kissed me one last time as hard as she could.
After we had gone a few yards, I decided to look again. The wind lifted the light-blue kerchief tied around her chin as she slowly went up the front steps with her head bowed and her hands covering her face. Foka was holding her by the arm.
Papa was sitting next to me and said nothing, while I choked on my tears and something else that pressed so hard in my throat I was afraid I might suffocate. Coming out onto the main road, we saw someone waving a white handkerchief from the balcony. I started to wave my own and the gestu
re calmed me a little. I continued to cry, but the thought that the tears were evidence of my sensitivity gave me pleasure and comfort.
After a mile or so I settled down and turned my unwavering attention to the thing right before my eyes, the rear of the piebald trace horse running on my side of the barouche. I watched the horse flick its tail and strike one foot against the other, and then the lash of the driver’s plaited whip to make the feet jump together. I watched the movement of the harness breechband and the breechband ring, and kept watching until the breechband was covered with lather near the horse’s tail. I started to look around: at the billowing fields of ripe rye; at the dark haze in which a plough, a peasant or a horse with a foal would turn up from time to time; at the mileposts; and even at the box to see which driver was with us. My face still wasn’t completely dry of tears, but my thoughts were already far from the mother with whom I had parted, perhaps forever. Yet every recollection brought me back to thoughts of her. I recalled the mushroom I had found the day before in the birch avenue, and how Lyubochka and Katenka had argued over who should pick it. And I recalled their tears as they said goodbye to us.
I felt sorry for them! And I felt sorry for Natalya Savishna and for the birches and for Foka! And for the bad-tempered Mimi – even for her. I felt sorry for everyone and everything. But poor maman? The tears welled up again, but not for long.
FIFTEEN
Childhood
The happy, happy unrecoverable days of childhood! How could I not love, not cherish its memories? They have lifted up and refreshed my soul and served as the source of its finest pleasures.
After running around to my heart’s content, I would be sitting at the tea table in my own tall chair. It would already be late and I would have long since drunk my cup of warm milk with sugar. Sleep would weigh on my eyelids, but I would still sit and listen. And how could I not? Maman would be talking to someone, and the sound of her voice would be so sweet and amiable. That sound alone spoke so much to my heart! I would look at her with eyes clouded with sleepiness and she would suddenly become very, very small, her face no bigger than a button, although it would still be just as clearly visible: I could see her gazing back at me and smiling. I liked to see her so tiny. I would squint even harder and she would become no bigger than a speck in my eye, but then I would shift a little, and the spell would be broken. I would narrow my eyes, move about and try in every other way to recover it, but to no avail.
Then I would get up, climb into an armchair and cosily settle in it.
‘You’ll fall asleep again, Nikolenka,’ maman would say. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’
‘I don’t want to sleep, Mama,’ I would answer, and sweet, vague reveries would fill my imagination, the healthy sleep of childhood would close my eyes, and a moment later I would be fast asleep and remain so until I was wakened. Then I would become aware through my sleep of the touch of someone’s tender hand. I would recognize it from the touch alone, and still not fully awake would involuntarily take hold of it and press it hard to my lips.
Everyone had gone to bed and a single candle burned in the drawing room. Maman had said that she would wake me herself, and it was she who had sat down on the edge of the chair where I was sleeping and run her wonderfully tender hand through my hair, and it was her dear familiar voice that had whispered in my ear, ‘Get up, my darling. It’s time to go to bed.’
No indifferent gazes inhibited her. She wasn’t afraid to pour out on me all her tenderness and love. Without moving, I would kiss her hand even harder.
‘Come, my angel, get up.’
She would take hold of my neck with her other hand and rapidly wiggle her fingers and tickle me. It would be quiet in the room and half-dark. My nerves would be stimulated by the tickling and awakening. Mama would be sitting right next to me and touching me, and I would smell her fragrance and hear her voice. All of which would make me jump up, wrap my arms around her neck, press my head against her breast and say breathlessly, ‘Oh, dear, dear Mama, how I love you!’
She would smile her sad, bewitching smile, take my head in both her hands, kiss me on the forehead and set me on her knees.
‘So you love me very much?’ Then she would fall silent for a moment before adding, ‘See that you always love me and never forget me. If your mama were no more, you wouldn’t forget her, would you? You wouldn’t forget her, Nikolenka?’
And she would kiss me even more tenderly.
‘Oh, don’t say that, my dove, my darling!’ I would shriek, kissing her knees with tears running from my eyes, tears of love and rapture.
After I had gone upstairs and was standing before the icons in my room in my quilted dressing gown, what a marvellous feeling it was to say the words, ‘Lord, protect dear Papa and Mama.’ As I repeated the prayers that I had first murmured as a small child after my beloved mother, my love for her and for God somehow became strangely fused in a single feeling.
After saying my prayers, I would wrap myself up in my little blanket. My soul would be clear, comforted and at ease. One dream would quickly replace another, but what were they about? They were elusive, but full of pure love and a hope for radiant happiness. I would remember Karl Ivanych and his bitter lot (he was the only unhappy person I knew), and become so sorry for him and so fond of him that the tears would flow from my eyes and I would think, ‘God grant him happiness, and me the opportunity to help him and ease his sorrow. I’m ready to sacrifice everything for him.’ And then I would stick my favourite porcelain toy – a little hare or dog – into a corner of the down pillow and admire how well, warm and comfortably it lay there. I would pray again for God to grant happiness to all, for everyone to be content, and for good weather for the next day’s outing, and then I would turn over on my other side, my thoughts and dreams would grow muddled and confused, and I would quietly and calmly fall asleep, my face still wet from my tears.
Will the freshness, unconcern, need for love and strength of faith you possess as a child ever return? What time could have been better than when the two finest virtues – innocent gaiety and a limitless need for love – were life’s only impulses?
Where are those ardent prayers? Where is the best gift – those pure tears of tenderness? A comforting angel would fly down to dry those tears with a smile and waft sweet reveries into the uncorrupted imagination of childhood.
Has life really left such a heavy mark on my heart that those tears and raptures are gone forever? Are the memories really all that remain?
SIXTEEN
Verses
Almost a month after our move to Moscow I was sitting upstairs at a large table in my grandmother’s house and writing. Across from me sat our drawing teacher, putting the finishing touches on a pencil sketch of the head of a Turk in a turban. Volodya stood behind the teacher and, craning his neck, watched over his shoulder. The head was Volodya’s first work in pencil and was to be presented to Grandmother that very day, her name-day.
‘Shouldn’t there be more shading there?’ Volodya asked the teacher, standing on tiptoe and pointing at the Turk’s neck.
‘No, there’s no need,’ the teacher said, putting his pencils and stub holder away in a little box with a sliding lid. ‘It’s excellent as it is. Don’t touch it any more. Well, what about you, Nikolenka?’ he added, getting up and continuing to look at the Turk from the side. ‘Tell us your secret at last. What are you going to give your grandmother? It really ought to be a head, too. Goodbye, gentlemen,’ he said, and picking up his hat and coupon,37 he left.
I, too, was thinking at that moment that a head would have been better than what I was struggling with. When we were told that it would soon be Grandmother’s name-day and that we should prepare gifts, I thought I would write her a poem for the occasion and immediately found a suitable rhyming couplet, hoping that the rest of it would come just as quickly. I’ve absolutely no recollection of where that idea, a very odd one for a child, came from, but I do remembe
r that it pleased me very much, and that my response to every question on the subject was that I would certainly give Grandmother a present, but that I couldn’t say what it was.
My expectation notwithstanding, it turned out that except for the couplet that had come to me in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t compose anything else, however hard I tried. I started reading the poems in our books, but neither Dmitriev nor Derzhavin38 were of any help; on the contrary, they convinced me even more of my own inability. Knowing that Karl Ivanych liked to copy out doggerel, I started to go through his papers, where, among some German poems, I found one in Russian that must have been from his own pen.
To Mademoiselle L. Petrovskaya. 1828. 3 June.
Remember near,
Remember far,
Remember of me
From today forth and until forever,
Remember even unto my grave,
How faithful I have knowed how to love.
Karl Mauer
The poem was written in a beautiful, round hand on fine postal tissue, and I liked it for the touching feeling with which it was imbued. I memorized it at once and decided to use it as a model. Everything got much easier after that. My name-day congratulation in twelve lines was finished and I was sitting at the table in our classroom and copying it out on vellum paper.
I had already ruined two sheets. Not because I thought of altering anything in the poem – it seemed superb to me – but because after the third line the ends started to curl up more and more, so that even from a distance you could see that it had been written crookedly and wasn’t any good.
The third sheet was just as crooked as the other two, but I decided not to recopy any more. In my poem I congratulated Grandmother, wished her many years of health, and concluded this way:
To comfort you we’ll never fear,
