Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘O Lord, why dost Thou punish me so horribly!’

  ‘Everyone despises me and always will. The road to everything is closed for me: friendship, love, honours. They’re all gone! Why did Volodya make signs to me that everyone could see and that didn’t help? Why did the horrible young princess look at my feet that way? Why did Sonyechka … She’s a darling, but why did she smile at that moment? Why did Papa turn red and grab me by the arm? Oh, it was awful! If only Mama were here. She wouldn’t have blushed for her Nikolenka.’ And her sweet likeness carried my imagination far away. I recalled the meadow in front of the house, the tall lindens in the garden, the clear pond with swallows swirling above it, a blue sky in which translucent white clouds had come to a rest, and fragrant ricks of fresh hay, among many other bright, serene memories that wafted through my distraught imagination.

  TWENTY-THREE

  After the Mazurka

  The young man who had danced in the first couple sat down at the children’s table with us during supper and was especially attentive to me, which would have greatly flattered my self-esteem, had I been able to feel anything after my disaster. But the young man wanted, I think, to cheer me up in whatever way he could. He started to joke with me, called me a brave fellow, and as soon as the grown-ups weren’t looking, poured me a small glass of wine from one of the various bottles and made me drink it. Towards the end of the meal, after the butler had poured me a quarter goblet of champagne from a bottle wrapped in a napkin and the young man had insisted that he pour a full glass and had made me drink that, too, I felt a pleasant warmth throughout my body, along with a particular fondness for my merry patron, and burst out laughing at something.

  Suddenly we heard the strains of the Grossvater56 and everyone started to get up. With that, my friendship with the young man ended: he went off to join the grown-ups, and since I didn’t dare follow him, I went from curiosity over to listen to what Mme Valakhina and her daughter were saying to each other.

  ‘Just another half-hour,’ Sonyechka said in a wheedling tone.

  ‘Really, my angel, we can’t.’

  ‘Please, just for me,’ she pleaded in an affectionate little voice.

  ‘Well, will it really be much fun for you if I’m sick tomorrow?’ Mme Valakhina said, rashly smiling.

  ‘Then it’s all right? We’ll stay?’ Sonyechka said, hopping with joy.

  ‘What am I to do with you? Go and dance, then. Here’s a partner for you,’ she said, pointing at me.

  Sonyechka offered me her hand and we ran off to the salon.

  The wine I had drunk and Sonyechka’s merry presence put the disastrous mazurka adventure completely out of mind. I made the most amusing moves with my feet, either imitating a horse with a little prance, or proudly lifting them high, or stamping them in place like a ram provoked by a dog, and laughing with all my heart and not worrying about the impression I might be making on anyone watching. Sonyechka didn’t stop laughing either. She laughed at the fact that we were twirling in a circle, holding each other’s hands; she guffawed while watching some old nobleman slowly raise his feet while stepping over a handkerchief as if it were a very hard thing to do; and she shrieked with laughter when I jumped almost to the ceiling to show how agile I was.

  Passing through Grandmother’s study, I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was wet with sweat, my hair was tousled, my cowlicks stuck out even more, but my general expression was so gay and kind and healthy that I liked myself.

  ‘If I could always be the way I am now,’ I thought, ‘someone might still like me.’

  But when I gazed again at the beautiful little face of my partner, there was, besides that expression of mirth, health and unconcern that I had liked in my own, so much elegant, tender beauty that I grew quite vexed with myself. I realized how silly it was for me to hope for the attention of such a wonderful creature.

  I couldn’t hope for mutual feeling, so I didn’t think about it. My heart was overflowing with happiness even without it. I didn’t understand that besides the feeling of love that filled my heart with joy, it was possible to ask for even greater happiness and hope for more than that the feeling would never end. It was fine as it was. My heart beat like a dove, my blood flowed ceaselessly into it, and I felt like crying.

  As we were walking down the hallway past the dark storage closet under the staircase, I glanced at it and thought, ‘How happy I would be if I could spend a hundred years with her in that dark closet with no one knowing we were living there.’

  ‘It really has been a lot of fun today, hasn’t it?’ I said in a soft, trembling voice, and quickened my step, frightened not so much by what I had said as by what I meant to say.

  ‘Yes … lots!’ she answered, turning her little head in my direction with such an unaffectedly warm expression that I was no longer afraid.

  ‘Especially after supper … But if you only knew how sorry I am’ – I wanted to say ‘sad’ but didn’t dare – ‘that you’ll be leaving shortly and we won’t see each other again.’

  ‘But why not?’ she said, staring at the toes of her slippers and running her little finger along the edge of the latticed screen we were walking past. ‘Mama and I drive to Tverskoy Boulevard every Tuesday and Friday. Don’t you go for walks?’

  ‘We’ll certainly ask to on Tuesday, and if they won’t let me, then I’ll run off by myself without my hat. I know the way.’

  ‘You know what?’ Sonyechka said all of a sudden. ‘I always say “thou” with some of the boys who come to see us. Dost thou want to?’ she added, giving her little head a shake and looking me in the eyes.

  We were entering the salon just as another, livelier part of the Grossvater was beginning.

  ‘If … you like,’ I said when the music was loud enough to drown out my words.

  ‘Don’t say you, say thou,’ Sonyechka corrected me with a laugh.

  The Grossvater ended, but I still hadn’t managed to utter a single sentence containing ‘thou’, although I thought of many in which the intimate pronoun could have been repeated several times. I just didn’t have the courage to. ‘Dost thou want to?’ and ‘Say thou’ echoed in my ears and produced a kind of intoxication: I saw nothing and no one except Sonyechka. I saw her curls gathered up and tucked behind her ears, revealing parts of her forehead and temples I hadn’t seen before. I saw her wrapped so snugly in her green shawl that only the tip of her nose was visible. I noticed that if she hadn’t made a small opening by her mouth with her pink little fingers, she would surely have suffocated. And then as she was descending the stairs with her mother, I saw her suddenly look back and nod her little head to us before disappearing through the door.

  Volodya, the Ivins, the young prince and I were all in love with Sonyechka and followed her with our eyes as we stood on the stairs. Exactly to whom she had nodded, I don’t know, although at that moment I was firmly convinced it was me.

  As we said goodbye to the Ivins I spoke to Seryozha in a rather free and easy and even distant way, before shaking his hand. If he realized he had that day lost all the love I felt for him, and along with it his power over me, he probably regretted it, although he tried to seem completely indifferent.

  I had for the first time in my life been unfaithful in love, and for the first time had experienced the sweetness of it. I was happy to exchange a worn-out feeling of habitual devotion for a fresh one of love filled with mystery and the unknown. Besides, to fall out of love and into it at the same time is to fall in love twice as much as before.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In Bed

  ‘How could I have loved Seryozha so passionately for so long?’ I wondered as I lay in bed. ‘No, he never understood or knew how to appreciate my love and didn’t deserve it. But Sonyechka! How charming! “Dost thou wish?” “It’s for thee to begin.”’

  Vividly picturing her little face, I hopped up onto my hands and knees, pulled the quilt over my head, tucked i
t under all around, and when there was no opening left, lay down and luxuriated in the pleasant sensation of warmth, while immersing myself in sweet daydreams and memories. Staring fixedly at the lining of the quilt, I saw her as clearly as I had seen her an hour before. I conversed with her in my mind, and that conversation, even though it made no sense at all, gave me indescribable pleasure, inasmuch as ‘thou’, ‘thy’, ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ constantly figured in it.

  Those daydreams were so vivid that I couldn’t fall asleep from the excitement and delight, and I wanted to share that excess of happiness with someone.

  ‘Darling Sonyechka!’ I almost said out loud, suddenly turning over. ‘Volodya, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered in a sleepy voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m in love, Volodya! Completely in love with Sonyechka!’

  ‘Well, what of it?’ he replied, stretching.

  ‘Oh, Volodya! You can’t imagine what’s happening to me. I’ve been lying here wrapped in my quilt and I saw her and talked to her so clearly that it’s just amazing. And do you know what else? When I lie here thinking about her, it makes me terribly sad, goodness knows why, and I feel like crying.’

  Volodya shifted his body.

  ‘The only thing I want,’ I went on, ‘is to be with her always, to see her always, and nothing more. Are you in love too? Admit the truth, Volodya.’

  It’s strange that I wanted everyone to be in love with Sonyechka and to talk about it.

  ‘What has that got to do with you?’ Volodya said, turning his face towards me. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t want to sleep, you’re only pretending,’ I cried, noticing from his gleaming eyes that he wasn’t thinking of sleep at all and had thrown off his quilt. ‘Let’s talk about her instead. She’s a charmer, isn’t she? So charming that if she said to me, “Nikolasha, jump out of the window or throw yourself in a fire!” I swear I would do it,’ I said. ‘I would do it at once and gladly. Oh, what charm!’ I added, vividly imagining her in front of me, and in order to enjoy that image more fully, I suddenly turned back over and stuck my head under the pillow. ‘I feel like crying so much, Volodya!’

  ‘What a ninny!’ he said with a grin, and, after a brief pause, ‘I’m not like you at all. I think if it were possible, I would first want to sit down beside her and talk.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re also in love?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Then,’ Volodya continued with a tender smile, ‘then I would kiss her little fingers and eyes and lips and nose and feet. I would kiss her all over.’

  ‘How silly!’ I yelled from under the pillow.

  ‘You don’t understand anything,’ Volodya scornfully replied.

  ‘No, I do, but you don’t and are saying silly things,’ I said through my tears.

  ‘Only there’s nothing to cry about. What a little girl you are!’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A Letter

  On 16 April, almost six months after the day I’ve just described, Father came upstairs during lessons and announced that we would be going with him that night to the country. Something about that news made my heart skip a beat, and my thoughts turned at once to Mama.

  The reason for the unexpected trip was the following letter.

  Petrovskoye. 12 April.

  Only now, at ten in the evening, have I received your good letter of 3 April, and in keeping with my usual habit, I’m answering at once. Fyodor brought it from town yesterday, but since it was late, he gave it to Mimi this morning. And Mimi, on the pretext that I wasn’t well and was upset, kept it all day. I did in fact have a small fever, and to tell you the truth, it’s been four days that I’ve been sick and in bed.

  Please don’t let that alarm you, my dear: I’m feeling quite well, and if Ivan Vasilyevich allows it, I think I’ll get up tomorrow.

  Last Friday I went for a ride with the children, but near the exit to the main road by the little bridge that has always scared me, the horses got stuck in the mud. It was a beautiful day, so I thought I would walk out to the main road while they pulled the barouche out. When I got to the chapel I was feeling very tired and sat down to rest, but since it took a half hour or so to round up people to pull the carriage out, I got cold, especially my feet, since I was wearing boots with thin soles and they were soaked. After dinner I had chills and a fever but continued to walk around as I usually do, and after tea I sat down with Lyubochka to play a piece for four hands. (You won’t recognize her; she’s made such progress!) But imagine my astonishment when I noticed that I couldn’t hold the measure. I tried several times, but everything in my mind was completely muddled, and there was a strange hum in my ears. I counted one, two, three, and then all of a sudden eight, fifteen, but the main thing was that I saw I was talking nonsense but still couldn’t help it. Mimi finally came to my rescue and put me to bed almost by force. So there’s a detailed account for you, my dear, of how I got sick and how it was my own fault. The next day I had a fairly high fever and our kind old Ivan Vasilyevich came and is still here and promises to let me back out into God’s world soon. What a splendid old man he is! While I had a fever and was delirious, he stayed awake by my bedside the whole night, and now, since he knows that I’m writing, he’s in the sitting room with the girls, and I can hear him from the bedroom telling them German folk tales while they die of laughter listening to him.

  La belle Flamande,57 as you call her, has been staying here with me over a week now, since her mother’s off visiting somewhere, and she has shown the most sincere attachment in her care of me. She’s been confiding all the secrets of her heart to me. With her beautiful face, kind heart and youthful freshness, a fine young woman in every respect might come from her if she were in good hands. But judging by her stories, she’ll be completely ruined in her present society. It occurred to me that if I didn’t have so many children of my own, I would be doing a good deed to take her in.

  Lyubochka wanted to write to you herself, but she’s already torn up her third sheet of paper and says, ‘I know what a mocker Papa is: if you make even one tiny little mistake, he’ll show it to everybody.’ Katenka is just as darling as before, and Mimi is just as kind and tedious.

  Let’s talk about something serious now. You wrote that your affairs have been going badly this winter and that you’ll have to use the Khabarovka money. It’s even strange to me that you’ve asked for my consent. Doesn’t everything that belongs to me also belong as much to you?

  You’re so kind-hearted, my dear, that from fear of upsetting me you hide the true state of your affairs, but I can guess: you’ve probably lost a great deal, and I’m not, cross my heart, at all upset about it. Therefore, if it can all be set right, please don’t fret too much about it and don’t torment yourself unnecessarily. I’ve grown used in regard to the children not only not to rely on your winnings but, forgive me, not even on any of your living. Your winnings give me no more pleasure than your losses cause me pain. The only thing that distresses me is your unfortunate passion for gambling, which deprives me of a part of your tender attachment and forces me to speak such bitter truths to you as I’m doing now – and God knows how painful that is for me! I won’t cease praying to Him to spare us one thing … not poverty (what does it matter?) but the awful situation wherein the interests of the children, which I’ll have to defend, come into conflict with our own. So far the Lord has heard my prayers: you haven’t crossed the line beyond which we would either have to sacrifice our living, which no longer belongs to us but to the children, or … It’s frightening to think about, but that terrible calamity has always threatened us. Yes, it’s a heavy cross the Lord has sent us both!

  You also wrote about the children and have returned to our old quarrel to ask my consent to send them away to school. You know my prejudice against that kind of education …

  I don’t know if you’ll agree with me, my dear, bu
t I implore you in any event to give me your promise, out of love for me, that as long as I live and even after my death, should it please God to part us, that you’ll never let that happen.

  You wrote that you’ll have to go to Petersburg in connection with our affairs. Christ be with you, my dearest, go and come back soon. We all miss you so! The spring has been miraculously fine: the balcony door has already been removed, the path to the greenhouse has been completely dry for four days now, the peach trees are in bloom, there are only a few patches of snow here and there, the swallows have returned, and Lyubochka has brought me the first spring flowers. The doctor says that in three days or so I’ll be completely well and able to breathe fresh air, and warm myself in the April sunshine. Farewell, my dear, and don’t worry, please, either about my health or your losses. Finish up your business and come back to us with the children for the whole summer. I’m making wonderful plans for how we’ll spend it, and the only thing needed to realize them is you.

  The next part of the letter was written in French in an uneven, barely legible scribble on another piece of paper. I translate it word for word.

  Don’t believe what I wrote about my illness. No one suspects how serious it is. I know only that I’ll never leave my bed. Don’t wait another moment but come at once and bring the children. Perhaps I’ll succeed in embracing you once more and in blessing them: that’s my one last wish. I know what a terrible blow I’m inflicting on you, but all the same, sooner or later, from me or from others, you would have received it. But let us try with firmness and hope for God’s mercy to endure this calamity. Let us submit to His will.

  Don’t think that what I’m writing is the delirium of a distraught imagination. On the contrary, my thoughts are exceptionally clear at this moment and I’m utterly serene. Don’t console yourself with the empty hope that they’re the vague, deluded forebodings of a fearful soul. No, I feel and I know, and I know because God has seen fit to reveal it to me, that I have not long to live.