Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  I can’t convey how much that discovery astonished me, although the feeling of astonishment quickly gave way to sympathy for Volodya’s action, so that it was no longer the action itself that astonished me, but how Volodya had grasped that it would be pleasurable to act that way. And involuntarily I wanted to do the same.

  Sometimes I would spend whole hours on the landing without any thought, listening intently for the slightest movement upstairs, even though I could never bring myself to imitate Volodya, despite wanting to more than anything in the world. Sometimes, while hiding behind the door, I would listen with a painful feeling of envy and jealousy to the bustle in the maids’ room, and I would think, ‘What sort of position would I be in if I went upstairs and tried to kiss Masha like Volodya? How would I – with my broad nose and cowlicks – respond if she should ask me what I wanted?’ Sometimes I would hear Masha say to Volodya, ‘What a nuisance! Why do you keep pestering me? Get out of here, you naughty boy. Why is it that Nikolay Petrovich never comes fooling around?’ She had no idea that ‘Nikolay Petrovich’ was at that very moment sitting on the stairs below and ready to give anything in the world to be in the naughty Volodya’s place.

  I was bashful by nature, and my bashfulness was increased by my conviction that I was ugly. And I was also convinced that nothing has a more pronounced effect on a person’s outlook than his appearance, or if not his appearance itself, then at least his belief that it is or isn’t attractive.

  I had too much pride to get used to my situation, and so, like the fox, I assured myself that the grapes were sour; that is, I tried to despise all the pleasures that are obtainable with an agreeable appearance, the ones that I had seen Volodya enjoying and that I envied with all my heart, but instead harnessed all the powers of my mind and imagination to find my enjoyments in proud solitude.

  SEVEN

  Shot

  ‘Good Heavens, gunpowder!’ Mimi exclaimed, gasping in alarm. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to burn the house down and kill us all?’

  And with an indescribably resolute expression she ordered everyone to move out of the way, went with long, determined strides over to the scattered shot and, despising the danger of a sudden explosion, began to stamp on it. When in her view the danger had passed, she called Mikhey and ordered him to throw the ‘gunpowder’ as far away as possible or, best of all, into water, and then with an imperious shake of her mobcap she went out to the drawing room.

  ‘They’re certainly being well looked after!’ she growled.

  When Papa came in from the guest house and we joined him in Grandmother’s room, Mimi was already sitting by the window and looking menacingly past the doorway with a sort of cryptically official expression. In her hand was something wrapped in several pieces of paper. I guessed that it was the shot and that Grandmother knew all about it.

  Present in Grandmother’s room along with Mimi were the chambermaid Gasha, who from the look of her flushed, wrathful face was extremely upset, and Doctor Blumenthal, a small pockmarked man, who was trying in vain to calm Gasha down by making covert conciliatory gestures with his eyes and head.

  Grandmother herself was sitting a bit off to the side and laying out a hand of the solitaire game ‘Traveller’, which always meant a particularly inauspicious mood.

  ‘How are you feeling today, maman? Did you sleep well?’ Papa asked as he respectfully kissed her hand.

  ‘Excellent, my dear. You know, it would appear that I’m always completely healthy,’ Grandmother answered, her tone implying that Papa’s question had been of the most impertinent and offensive kind. ‘Well, are you going to give me a clean handkerchief or not?’ she continued, speaking to Gasha.

  ‘I just did,’ Gasha replied, indicating the snow-white batiste handkerchief that lay on the arm of Grandmother’s chair.

  ‘Take this filthy rag away and give me a clean one, my dear.’

  Gasha went over to the chiffonier, opened a drawer, and then slammed it shut so violently that the windows rattled. Grandmother glanced menacingly over at us and continued to watch all the chambermaid’s movements closely. When Gasha gave her what looked to me like the same handkerchief, she said, ‘When are you going to grate me some snuff, my dear?’

  ‘When it’s time, I will.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’ll do it today.’

  ‘If you do not wish to serve me, my dear, you should have told me so. I would have released you long ago.’

  ‘Go ahead, no one will weep,’ the chambermaid muttered under her breath.

  At that point the doctor started to wink at her, but she glared at him with such a fierce, unyielding expression that he immediately looked down and started to play with his watch key.

  ‘You see, my dear, how they talk to me in my own house?’ Grandmother said to Papa after the still muttering Gasha had left the room.

  ‘I’ll grind the snuff for you myself, maman, if you like,’ Papa said, obviously disconcerted at being addressed in that unexpected way.

  ‘Oh no, but I thank you. She allows herself to be so rude because she knows that no one else is able to grind it the way I like. Are you aware, my dear,’ Grandmother continued after a pause, ‘that your children nearly burned down the house today?’

  Papa looked at Grandmother with respectful curiosity.

  ‘Here’s what they were playing with. Show it to them,’ she said to Mimi.

  Papa took the shot in his hands and couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘This is shot, maman. It’s completely harmless.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you, my dear, for your instruction, but I’m too old …’

  ‘Her nerves, her nerves!’ the doctor whispered.

  Papa immediately turned to us: ‘Where did you get this? And how dare you fool with such things?’

  ‘Don’t ask them, ask their tutor,’ Grandmother said, pronouncing the word ‘tutor’ with special contempt. ‘Why isn’t he keeping an eye on them?’

  ‘Woldemar said that Karl Ivanych himself gave them the gunpowder,’ Mimi chimed in.

  ‘Well, you see what good he is,’ Grandmother continued. ‘And where is he, this tutor, whatever his name is? Send him in.’

  ‘I gave him the day off for a visit,’ Papa said.

  ‘That’s no reason; he’s supposed to be here all the time. The children aren’t mine but yours, and I’ve no right to advise you, since you’re cleverer than I am,’ Grandmother went on, ‘but it would seem that the time has come to hire a real teacher and not some German peasant tutor. And a stupid peasant, at that, who’s incapable of teaching them anything but bad manners and Tyrolean songs. Is it really so necessary, I ask you, for the children to know how to sing Tyrolean songs? However, there’s no one to think about that now, and you may do as you like.’

  The word ‘now’ meant ‘now that they have no mother’ and called forth sad memories in Grandmother’s heart. She glanced down at the portrait on her snuffbox and lapsed into thought.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for some time,’ Papa hastened to reply, ‘and I wanted to consult you about it, maman. Shall we ask St-Jérôme, who’s been giving them weekly lessons?’

  ‘He would be a fine choice, my friend,’ Grandmother said, dropping the displeased tone she had been using. ‘St-Jérôme is at least a gouverneur who will understand how des enfants de bonne maison ought to behave, and not some simple menin,2 a tutor who’s only good for taking them out for walks.

  ‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow,’ Papa said.

  And, in fact, two days after that conversation Karl Ivanych yielded his place to the young French dandy.

  EIGHT

  Karl Ivanych’s Story

  Late in the evening of the day before he would leave us for good, Karl Ivanych was standing beside his bed in his quilted dressing gown and red cap and carefully packing his things in a travelling bag.

  His treatment of us over the l
ast several days had been especially remote: he seemed to be avoiding all contact with us. And that time, too, he gave me a dour look as I came into the room and then continued with what he was doing. I lay down on my bed, but Karl Ivanych, who had strictly forbidden that, said nothing, and the thought that he would no longer scold or stop us, that we would no longer be any concern of his, vividly reminded me of our imminent separation. It made me sad that he didn’t love us any more and I wanted him to know it.

  ‘Let me help you, Karl Ivanych,’ I said, going over to him.

  Karl Ivanych glanced at me and then looked away, but in that quick glance I saw not the indifference to which I had attributed his coldness but a sincere, concentrated sorrow.

  ‘God sees all and knows all, and His holy will be done in everything,’ he said, standing up straight with a heavy sigh. ‘Yes, Nikolenka,’ he continued upon seeing the expression of unaffected sympathy with which I was looking at him, ‘it is my fate to be unhappy from my childhood to my gravestone. The good I have done for people has always been repaid with meanness, and my reward is not here but there,’ he said, pointing upward. ‘If you only knew my story and all that I have been through in this life! I was a cobbler, I was a soldier, I was a Deserteur, I worked in a factory, I was a teacher, and now I am nothing! And like the Son of God, I have no place to lay down my head,’ he concluded, closing his eyes and lowering himself into his armchair.

  Realizing that Karl Ivanych’s mood was a sensitive one in which he would express his heartfelt thoughts for himself alone, regardless of the listener, I sat down on the bed without speaking or taking my eyes off his kind face.

  ‘You are not a little child, you are able to understand. I will tell you my story and everything that I have been through in this life. Someday you will remember the old friend who loved you children very much!’

  Karl Ivanych leaned his elbow on the little table beside him, took some snuff, and then, with a heavenward roll of his eyes, he began his narrative using the special flat, guttural voice in which it had been his habit to give us dictation.

  ‘I vas onlocky efen on my Mutter’s wombe. Das Unglück verfolgte mich schon im Schosse meiner Mutter!’ he repeated in German with even greater feeling.

  Since Karl Ivanych later told me his story more than once in the same order, with the same expressions and the same unvarying intonations, I hope to convey it virtually word for word, although obviously without the mistakes of language that the reader can judge from that first sentence. Whether it really was his story and not a work of invention born of his time alone in our house, or an embellishment of the true events of his life with imaginary facts that he himself had begun to believe after frequent repetition, I’ve been unable to decide to this day. On the one hand, he told the story with too much of the lively feeling and consistency of method that are the hallmarks of verisimilitude for it not to be believed, while on the other, there were too many poetical beauties in it, and the beauties raised doubts.

  ‘In my veins flows the noble blood of the Counts of Sommerblat! In meinen Adern fliesst das edel Blut des Grafen von Sommerblat! I was born six months after the wedding. My mother’s husband (I called him “Papa”) was a tenant of Count Sommerblat. He was unable to forget my mother’s shame and did not love me. I had a little brother, Johann, and two sisters, but I was a stranger in my own family! Ich war ein Fremder in meiner eigenen Familie! When Johann did foolish things, Papa would say, “I will not have a moment’s peace with that child Karl!” and I would be scolded and punished. When my sisters got angry with each other, Papa would say, “Karl will never learn to obey!” and I would be scolded and punished. Only my dear kind Mama loved and petted me. Often she would say to me, “Karl, come here to my room,” and would secretly kiss me. “Poor, poor Karl!” she would say, “No one loves you, but I would not trade you for anyone. Your mama asks but one thing of you,” she would say to me, “study hard and always be an honest German, and God will not abandon you! Trachte nur ein ehrlicher Deutscher zu werden – sagte sie – und der liebe Gott wird dich nicht verlassen!” And I did my best. When I was fourteen and old enough to take Communion, my mama said to my papa, “Karl is a big boy now, Gustav. What shall we do with him?” And Papa said, “I don’t know.” Then Mama said, “Let us give him to Mr Schulz in town. Let him be a cobbler.” And my papa said, “Good.” Und mein Vater sagte “Gut”. I lived six years and seven months in the town in the home of a master cobbler and my employer liked me. He said, “Karl is a fine worker and soon he will be my Geselle!”3 But … man proposes, while God disposes. In 1796 a Conscription was ordered, and all who could serve, from eighteen to twenty-one, had to assemble in the town.

  ‘My papa and brother, Johann, came to the town and together we went to draw lots to see who would be a Soldat and who would not be. Johann drew a bad lot – he had to be a Soldat. I drew a good one – I did not. And Papa said, “I had only one son and now I must part with him! Ich hatte einen einzigen Sohn und von diesem muss ich mich trennen!”

  ‘I took his hand and said, “Why do you say that, Papa? Come with me and I’ll tell you something.” And Papa came. Papa came with me and we sat down at a little table in a tavern. “Give us two Bierkrüge,” I said, and tankards were brought. We each drank one, and my brother, Johann, drank one too.

  ‘“Papa!” I said, “do not say that you ‘had only one son and now you must part with him’. My heart wanted to jump out when I heard that. Brother Johann will not serve – it is I who will be a Soldat! No one needs Karl here and Karl will be a Soldat.”

  ‘“You are a worthy fellow, Karl Ivanych!” Papa said and kissed me. “Du bist ein braver Bursche!” – sagte mir mein Vater und küsste mich.

  ‘And I was a Soldat!’

  NINE

  The Preceding Continued

  ‘It was a terrible time then, Nikolenka,’ Karl Ivanych continued. ‘It was Napoleon then. He wanted to conquer Germany, and we defended our fatherland to the last drops of blood! Und wir verteidigten unser Vaterland bis auf den letzten Tropfen Blut!

  ‘I was at Ulm and at Austerlitz! I was at Wagram! Ich war bei Wagram!’4

  ‘Did you really fight, too?’ I asked, looking at him in astonishment. ‘Did you really kill people, too?’

  Karl Ivanych immediately put me at ease on that account.

  ‘Once a French Grenadier lagged behind his own and fell down on the road. I ran up and was about to stab him with my bayonet, aber der Franzose warf sein Gewehr und rief pardon5 and I let him go!

  ‘At Wagram Napoleon drove us onto an island and surrounded us, so that there was no escape. We went three days without provisions, while standing in water up to our knees. And the scoundrel Napoleon would neither capture us nor let us go! Und der Bösewicht Napoleon wollte uns nicht gefangen nehmen und auch nicht freilassen!

  ‘On the fourth day, thank goodness, they took us captive and led us away to a castle. I was wearing blue trousers and a tunic of good cloth and had fifteen thalers and a silver watch, a present from my papa. A French Soldat took them all away. Fortunately for me, I had three gold pieces my mama had sewn into my undershirt. No one found them!

  ‘I did not want to remain in the castle for long and decided to escape. Once on a big holiday, I told the sergeant who kept watch on us, “Mister sergeant, today is a big holiday. I want to celebrate. Bring two bottles of Madeira, if you please, and we will drink them together.” And the sergeant said, “Fine.” When the sergeant brought the Madeira and we had each drunk a glass, I took his hand and said, “Mister sergeant, perhaps you have a father and mother?” He said, “I do, Mister Mauer.” “My father and mother,” I said, “have not seen me in eight years, and do not know if I am alive or long dead in my grave. Mister sergeant, I have two gold coins that were in my undershirt. Take them and let me go. Be my benefactor, and my mama will pray to Almighty God for you till the end of her days.”

  ‘The sergeant drank a glass of Madeira and said, �
��Mister Mauer, I like you very much and I am very sorry for you, but you are a prisoner and I am a Soldat!” I shook his hand and said, “Mister sergeant!” Ich drückte ihm die Hand und sagte, “Herr Sergeant!”

  ‘And the sergeant said, “You are a poor man and I will not take your money, but I will help you. When I go to bed, buy a pail of vodka for the soldiers and they will sleep. I will not keep watch on you.”

  ‘He was a good man. I bought a pail of vodka, and when the soldiers were drunk I put on my boots and old overcoat and quietly went out of the door. I went along a rampart and was going to jump, but there was water and I did not want to ruin my last clothes. I went to the gate.

  ‘The sentry was walking auf und ab6 with his gun and looked at me. “Qui vive?” sagte er auf einmal, and I said nothing; “Qui vive?” sagte er zum zweiten Mal, and I said nothing; “Qui vive?” sagte er zum dritten Mal,7 and I ran. I jumped in the water, climbed to the other side, and took to my heels in a cloud of dust. Ich sprang in’s Wasser, kletterte auf die andere Seite und machte mich aus dem Staube.

  ‘I ran along the road all night, but when daylight came I was afraid of being seen and hid in the tall rye. I knelt down and folded my hands and thanked God Almighty for his mercy, and with a peaceful feeling I fell asleep. Ich danke dem allmächtigen Gott für Seine Barmherzigheit und mit beruhigtem Gefühl schlief ich ein.

  ‘I awoke the next evening and continued on my way. Soon a big German cart with two black horses overtook me. In the cart was a well-dressed man smoking a pipe and watching me. I walked slowly, so the cart would pass by, but when I did so the cart slowed down, too, and the man kept looking at me. I walked faster and the cart went faster, too, and the man kept looking at me. I sat down on the road, and the man stopped his horses and looked at me. “Young man,” he said, “where are you going so late?” I said, “I am going to Frankfurt.” “Get in my cart, there is room, and I will take you. Why are you not carrying anything? Why are you unshaven, and why is there mud on your clothes?” he asked after I sat down beside him. “I am a poor man,” I said. “I want to find a job in a Fabrik, and my clothes are muddy because I fell down on the road.” “You are not telling the truth, young man,” he said, “the road is dry now.”