by Leo Tolstoy
Let me not be reproached that the daydreams of my youth were as puerile as those of my childhood and boyhood. I’m sure that if it should be my lot to live to a venerable old age and my story keeps pace with my years, my daydreams as an old man of seventy will be just as impossibly puerile as they are now. I’ll daydream of some charming Maria who’ll fall in love with me, a toothless old man, just as she did with Mazeppa,9 or of how through some extraordinary circumstance my dim-witted son will become a government minister, or of how I’ll suddenly have piles of money in the millions. I’m sure there’s no human being of any age who lacks that comforting and beneficial ability to daydream, although, except for the common feature of impossibility, of magicalness, the daydreaming of each person and age will have its own distinctive character.
In the period I regard as the end of boyhood and the beginning of youth, four feelings formed the basis of my own daydreaming. The first was love for her, for an imagined woman of whom I always dreamed in the same way, and whom I expected to meet at any moment. That she had a little of Sonyechka in her, a little of Vasily’s wife, Masha, when she was washing our linens in the tub, and a little of the woman with the pearls on her white neck, whom I had seen long ago in a box next to ours at the theatre. The second feeling was love of love. I wanted everyone to know and love me. When I spoke my name, Nikolay Irtenyev, I wanted everyone to be impressed by the news and to gather around me and be grateful to me for something. The third feeling was a vain hope for some extraordinary good fortune, a hope so strong and firm that it verged on insanity. So sure was I that some magical event would suddenly make me the richest and most famous man in the world that I was in constant, eager expectation of it. I kept thinking that it was about to begin, and that I would now attain all that anyone could wish for, and I hurried everywhere, supposing that it had already begun wherever I wasn’t. The fourth and main feeling was one of disgust with myself and remorse, but a remorse so fused with hope for happiness that there wasn’t anything sad about it. It seemed so easy and natural to me to break free of everything in the past, make a fresh start, forget all that had gone before, and begin my life and all its relations anew, that the past didn’t oppress or bind me. I even took pleasure in my disgust and tried to see the past as gloomier than it was. The blacker the circle of memories from the past, the more purely and radiantly did the bright point of the present stand apart from it and the rainbow colours of the future unfurl. That voice of remorse and of a passionate desire for improvement was in fact the chief new mental sensation of that period of my development, and it laid the foundation for a new view of myself, of others, and of the world. How often in melancholy times, when my soul was quietly submitting to life’s falsehood and depravity, has that virtuous, consoling voice suddenly and boldly risen up against every untruth, fiercely unmasking the past, indicating the clear point of the present, making me love it, and promising goodness and happiness in the future? Can it really be, O virtuous, consoling voice, that one day you will be heard no more?
FOUR
Our Family Circle
Papa was rarely home that spring. But on the other hand, when he was at home he was exceptionally gay, tapping out his favourite ditties on the piano, gazing at us with sweet little eyes, and making up little jokes about us and Mimi, such as that the Georgian heir apparent had seen Mimi out driving, and was so in love with her that he had petitioned the Synod10 for a divorce, or that I had been made an aide to the envoy to Vienna, all of it said with a straight face. He teased Katenka with spiders, which she was afraid of, and was quite genial with our friends Dubkov and Nekhlyudov, regaling them and us with his plans for the coming year. Although the plans changed almost daily and contradicted each other, they were so fascinating that we were spellbound, and Lyubochka stared without blinking at Papa’s mouth, in order not to miss a single word. The plans involved leaving us behind in Moscow, while he and Lyubochka went to Italy for two years, or buying an estate on the southern shore of the Crimea and going there every summer, or moving the entire family to Petersburg, and so forth. But besides that particular gaiety another change had lately taken place in Papa that greatly surprised me. He had ordered fashionable clothes for himself: an olive tailcoat, stylish trousers with foot straps and a long fur-trimmed overcoat that suited him very well, and he often smelled of fine scent when he went out, especially if it was to call on a certain lady of whom Mimi never spoke without a sigh and a face that said, ‘Poor orphans! A regrettable passion! It’s a good thing she isn’t here!’ and so on. I learned from Nikolay, since Papa told us nothing about his gambling, that he had been especially lucky over the winter, winning terrific sums, and had put the money in a savings bank, intending not to gamble any more that spring. Probably afraid that he couldn’t resist otherwise, he wanted to depart for the country as soon as possible and had even decided not to wait for my examinations but to set out for Petrovskoye with the girls right after Easter, leaving Volodya and me to join them later.
Volodya had been inseparable from Dubkov that whole winter, even as he and Dmitry had started to drift apart. Volodya and Dubkov’s main pleasures, as far as I could tell from the conversations I heard, were constant champagne drinking, sleigh rides under the windows of a young lady with whom they were both apparently in love, and dancing opposite each other at real balls instead of the children’s variety. Even though we loved each other, that last circumstance did much to distance Volodya and me. We felt too great a difference – between a boy who was still visited by teachers and someone who danced at great balls – to share our thoughts with each other. Katenka was already quite grown up and reading a great many novels, and the thought that she might get married soon no longer seemed a joke to me. But even though Volodya was grown up, too, he and Katenka were not only not friends, but even seemed to despise each other. Generally, whenever she was at home alone she did nothing but read novels and was mostly bored. But when any strange men happened to be around, she would become very lively and obliging and do something with her eyes that left me at a complete loss as to what she meant to express by it. It wasn’t until I heard from her in conversation that the only coquetry permissible to a young lady is with her eyes that I was able to explain to myself those strange, unnatural ocular gestures, which didn’t seem to astonish anyone else in the least. Lyubochka, too, had already started to wear a long dress that almost completely covered her bandy legs, but she was just as much a crybaby as before. Now she dreamed of marrying not a hussar but a singer or a musician, and with that goal was diligently studying music. St-Jérôme, knowing that his time in our home would end with the last of my examinations, had found himself a position with some count, and after that regarded our household with something like disdain. He was rarely at home, had started to smoke cigarettes, which at the time were a great foppery, and constantly whistled cheerful tunes through a visiting card. Mimi grew more and more despondent with each passing day, and from the time that we had started to grow up no longer expected anything good from anyone or anything.
When I came in to dinner, I found only Mimi, Katenka, Lyubochka and St-Jérôme at the table. Papa wasn’t home and Volodya was studying for an examination with some classmates in his room and had asked that dinner be brought to him there. The head of the table had lately been occupied for the most part by Mimi, whom none of us respected, and dinner had lost much of its charm. It was no longer, as it had been in maman’s or Grandmother’s time, a kind of ritual that at a certain hour brought the whole family together and divided the day in two. Now we permitted ourselves to arrive late, to come only for the second course, to drink wine from tumblers (following the example of St-Jérôme himself), to slouch in our chairs, to get up without finishing, and to take various other liberties of the kind. Dinner had ceased to be the joyful family ceremony that it had been before. How much better it was in Petrovskoye when at two o’clock everyone was sitting in the drawing room, washed and dressed for dinner and anticipating the appoi
nted hour in pleasant conversation. The very moment the clock started to whirr in the pantry to strike two, Foka would quietly step into the room with a napkin over his arm and a dignified, even slightly dour expression on his face. ‘Dinner is ready!’ he would intone in a loud, drawling voice, and then all of us with happy, contented faces – the older ones in front and the younger ones behind – would with a swish of starched skirts and a creak of boots and shoes go to the dining room and take our customary places, quietly chatting among ourselves. Or how much better in Moscow, where everyone would stand quietly talking around the table set in the salon while waiting for Grandmother, whom Gavrilo had just gone to inform that the meal was ready. And then a door would suddenly open and the rustling of a dress and the shuffling of feet would be heard, and Grandmother, in a mobcap with some extravagant lilac bow on the side, would sail out of her room with, depending on the state of her health at the time, a radiant smile or a grim sidelong glance. Gavrilo would rush over to her chair, the other chairs would scrape, and feeling a chill run down your spine (a precursor of appetite), you would pick up your slightly damp starched napkin, nibble on a crust of bread, and then with eager, joyful anticipation, rubbing your palms together under the table, watch the steaming bowls of soup the butler would serve by rank, age and Grandmother’s special favour.
But now I experienced neither happiness nor excitement on coming in to dinner.
The chatter of Mimi, St-Jérôme and the girls about what awful boots the Russian teacher had been wearing, or that the young Kornakov princesses now had dresses with flounces, and so on – that chatter, which before had inspired in me a genuine scorn that I made no effort to hide, especially in regard to Lyubochka and Katenka, now failed to upset my virtuous new mood. I was exceptionally mild. Smiling, I listened to them in a particularly amiable way, respectfully asked them to pass the kvass, and agreed with St-Jérôme, who corrected a phrase I had used during the meal, explaining that it’s more elegant to say je puis than je peux.11 I must admit, however, that it was a little disagreeable that no one paid any attention to my mildness and virtue. After dinner Lyubochka showed me a piece of paper on which she had listed all her sins. I found that to be very good, but said that it would have been even better to list them all in her soul, although ‘none of that is really the point’.
‘Whyever not?’ Lyubochka asked.
‘Well, it’s all right, too – you wouldn’t understand,’ I said, and then went up to my room after telling St-Jérôme I was going to study, but actually in the hour and a half left before confession to make a list of my own duties and occupations for the rest of my life, and to commit to paper the purpose of my life and the rules by which I should always act without backsliding.
FIVE
Rules
I got out a sheet of paper, wishing first to make a list of my obligations and activities for the coming year. The paper needed to be lined. Since I couldn’t find a ruler, I used a Latin dictionary instead. But besides leaving an oblong puddle of ink on the paper after I drew my pen along its edge and removed it, the dictionary didn’t reach the whole length of the sheet, and the line curved around its soft corner. I got out another sheet and, by moving the dictionary along it, made lines of a sort. Dividing my obligations into three kinds – to myself, to my family, and to God – I started to list those to myself, but they proved so numerous and of so many kinds and subdivisions that I saw that I would first have to write Rules of Life and only then make the list. I got out six more sheets, bound them together in a booklet, and at the top of the first page wrote Rules of Life. But the words were written so crookedly and unevenly that I wondered if I shouldn’t write them again, and for a long time I stared at the tattered list and misshapen title in dismay. Why is everything so beautiful and clear in my mind, yet so distorted on paper and in life in general whenever I try to apply to it something I’ve been thinking about?
‘The confessor is here. Please come down for the rules,’12 Nikolay entered to tell me.
I stuck the booklet in my desk, looked in the mirror, combed my hair forward, which I was convinced gave me a thoughtful look, and went downstairs to the sitting room, where a table was already set with an icon and lighted wax tapers. Papa came in through the other door at the same time. The confessor, a grey-haired monk with a stern, elderly face, blessed him, and Papa kissed his small, wide, lean hand. I did the same.
‘Call Woldemar,’ Papa said. ‘Where is he? Oh, never mind. He’s taking Communion at the university.’
‘He’s studying with the prince,’ Katenka said, looking at Lyubochka. Lyubochka suddenly blushed for some reason, scowled and, pretending that something was hurting her, left the room. I went out after her. She stopped in the drawing room and wrote something else on her piece of paper with a pencil.
‘What, did you commit another sin?’ I asked.
‘No, it’s nothing. I was just writing,’ she answered with a blush.
Just then the voice of Dmitry saying goodbye to Volodya was heard in the entry room.
‘So, everything’s a temptation for you,’ Katenka said to Lyubochka as she came into the drawing room.
I couldn’t understand what had happened to my sister; she was so mortified that tears welled in her eyes, and her embarrassment reached the point where it turned into vexation with herself and with Katenka, who apparently had been teasing her.
‘It’s obvious that you’re a foreigner’ – nothing was more offensive to Katenka than being called a foreigner, which is why Lyubochka used the word – ‘to upset me on purpose right before such a sacrament,’ she said in a pompous voice. ‘You must realize that it isn’t a joke.’
‘You know what she wrote, Nikolenka?’ Katenka asked, offended at having been called a foreigner. ‘She wrote –’
‘I never thought you would be so malicious,’ Lyubochka said, starting to whimper and step away from us. ‘At such a moment and on purpose. She’s forever leading me into sin. I don’t tease you about your feelings and heartaches.’
SIX
Confession
With those and other scattered thoughts of the kind, I returned to the sitting room after all the others had gathered there, and just as the confessor, now standing, was preparing to recite the prayer that precedes confession. But as soon as the monk’s severe, expressive voice rang out in the general silence as he began the prayer, and especially when he spoke to us the words, ‘Reveal all your trespasses without shame, concealment or excuse and your soul will be purified in the sight of God, but if you conceal anything, you will be committing a grievous sin,’ I felt the return of the same awed trepidation I had felt that morning at the thought of the impending sacrament. I even took pleasure in being conscious of that state and tried to hold on to it, stopping all the thoughts that came into my mind and intensifying my sense of fear.
The first to confess was Papa. He was in Grandmother’s room a very long time, during which all of us in the sitting room either said nothing or whispered among ourselves about who would go next. At last the voice of the monk reciting a prayer was heard by the door, along with Papa’s footsteps. The door creaked and he came out, coughing and shrugging a shoulder, as was his habit, and not looking at us.
‘Well, now you go, Lyuba, and be sure to tell everything. You’re my great sinner, you know,’ Papa said merrily, squeezing her cheek.
Lyubochka turned pale and then blushed, took her list out of her apron, put it back, and then lowering her head and drawing in her neck as if expecting a blow from above, she went through the door. She wasn’t gone very long, but her shoulders were shaking from her sobs as she emerged.
Finally it was my turn after pretty Katenka came out of the door with a smile. With the same dull fear and deliberate wish to stimulate the fear more and more in myself, I entered the half-lit room. Standing in front of a lectern, the confessor slowly turned his face towards me.
I spent no more than five minutes in Grandmother
’s room, but came back out a happy and, according to my beliefs at the time, a completely pure, morally reborn and new person. Even though I was struck disagreeably by all the old circumstances of life – the same rooms, the same furniture, the same body (I would have liked everything external to change the same way it seemed to me that I had changed within) – even so, I remained in that joyful mood until I went to bed.
