Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  Ilenka was at that moment sitting silently by the window and supposedly examining my cocked hat, while angrily, if barely noticeably, muttering something to himself under his breath.

  ‘Well, and I wanted to ask you, Nikolay Petrovich,’ the old man continued, ‘about my own Ilyusha; that is, did he do well, too? He said that you and he will be together, so don’t abandon him, look after him, advise him.’

  ‘What do you mean? He got excellent marks!’ I replied, glancing at Ilenka, who blushed and stopped moving his lips when he felt my gaze on him.

  ‘Couldn’t he spend the day with you?’ the old man said with such a simpering smile it was as if he were quite afraid of me, although he kept so close to me wherever I happened to move that there wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t aware of the wine and tobacco reek he emitted. I was vexed that he had put me in such a false position with his son, and that he was keeping me from attending to what at the moment was a very important activity for me: getting dressed. The main thing, however, was the maddening reek of alcohol, which so upset me that I said very coldly that I couldn’t be with Ilenka, since I would be out all day.

  ‘But didn’t you want to go to Sister’s, Papa?’ Ilenka said with a smile, but without looking at me. ‘And I’ve got things to do, as well.’ I felt even more vexed and embarrassed, and to compensate in some way for my refusal, I quickly added that I wouldn’t be at home, since I had to be at Prince Ivan Ivanovich’s, at Princess Kornakova’s and at Mr Ivin’s, the one who occupied such an important post, and that I would probably be dining at Princess Nekhlyudova’s. I thought that if they knew how important the people I was going to see were, they couldn’t make any more claim on me. As they were getting ready to go, I invited Ilenka to come by another time, but he just mumbled something and smiled stiffly. It was clear that he would never set foot in my door again.

  I left immediately after them to make my calls. Volodya, whom I had asked that morning to join me so I wouldn’t feel so awkward on my own, declined on the grounds that it would be just too sentimental for two ‘little brothers’ to drive around together in the same ‘little droshky’.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Valakhins

  And so I set out by myself. The first call, by proximity, was at the Valakhins on Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane. I hadn’t seen Sonyechka for three years and my infatuation had obviously long since passed, although a vivid and touching memory of that childhood love remained in my heart. There had been times in those three years when I recalled her with such force and clarity that tears came to my eyes and I felt myself in love again, but they only lasted a few moments and were slow to return.

  I knew that Sonyechka and her mother had spent some two years abroad, where, it was said, their stagecoach had overturned and Sonyechka had cut her face on one of its windows and apparently been quite disfigured. On my way to their house I vividly recalled the former Sonyechka and wondered about the one I was about to see. Because of her two years abroad, I for some reason imagined her as exceptionally tall with a beautiful waist, and as serious and proud yet exceptionally attractive. My imagination refused to picture her with a face disfigured by scars; on the contrary, having heard somewhere of an ardent lover who remained true to the object of his desire despite her disfigurement by smallpox,41 I tried to think that I was in love with Sonyechka in order to have the merit of remaining true to her in spite of her scars. I wasn’t actually in love as I drove up to the Valakhins’, but having stirred those old memories in myself, I was quite ready to fall in love again and very much wanted to, all the more since after seeing all my friends in love, I had long been ashamed of lagging so far behind.

  The Valakhins lived in a trim little wooden house entered through a yard. I rang the bell – at the time a great rarity in Moscow – and a tiny, neatly dressed little boy opened the door. Either he didn’t know how or didn’t want to tell me if the masters were at home, and leaving me alone in the dark entry room, he ran off down an even darker hallway.

  I remained alone quite a long time in that dark room, where, besides the front door and the door to the hallway, there was another closed door, and I was partly surprised by the gloomy character of the house and partly inclined to believe that it had to be that way with people who had just returned from abroad. About five minutes later the door to the salon was opened from inside by the same little boy, who led me through it to a tidy but modest drawing room where Sonyechka immediately joined me.

  She was seventeen. She was very short and very thin, and her face had a sallow, unhealthy colour. There weren’t any scars to be seen on it, but her charming, prominent eyes and bright, cheerfully good-natured smile were the same ones I had known and loved as a child. I hadn’t expected her to be that way at all, and therefore couldn’t immediately lavish on her the feeling that I had prepared on the way there. She shook my hand in the English manner, which was then just as great a rarity as the doorbell, frankly shook it, and sat me down next to herself on the sofa.

  ‘Oh, how happy I am to see you, dear Nicolas,’ she said, gazing into my face with such a sincere expression of pleasure that I heard in the words ‘dear Nicolas’ a friendly rather than patronizing tone. To my surprise she was, after her trip abroad, even simpler, sweeter and more kindred in address than before. I detected two small scars by her nose and one eyebrow, but her marvellous eyes and smile were completely in accord with my memory and sparkled in the same old way.

  ‘Oh, how you’ve changed!’ she said. ‘You’re all grown up! Well, and me? How do you find me?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have recognized you,’ I replied, even though I was thinking at that moment that I would always have recognized her. I felt myself once again in the merrily carefree mood that I had been in five years before when she and I had danced the Grossvater at Grandmother’s ball.

  ‘What, have I become so unattractive?’ she asked with a shake of her little head.

  ‘Oh no, not at all. You’ve grown a bit and are older,’ I hastened to answer, ‘but on the contrary … and even …’

  ‘Oh well, it’s no matter. You remember our dances and games and St-Jérôme and Mme Dorat?’ (I didn’t remember any Mme Dorat; carried away in enjoyment of her childhood memories, Sonyechka had apparently mixed them up.) ‘Oh, it was a wonderful time,’ she continued, and the same smile – or an even better one than I had carried in my memory – and the same eyes sparkled before me. As she spoke I managed a thought about the position I was in at that moment, and concluded to myself that I was at that moment in love. No sooner did I reach that conclusion than my happy, carefree mood instantly vanished, and a kind of fog covered everything before me, even her eyes and smile, and I felt embarrassed about something and blushed and lost the ability to speak.

  ‘The times are different now,’ she went on, sighing and raising her eyebrows a little. ‘Everything’s got much worse, and we have too, isn’t that right, Nicolas?’

  Unable to reply, I looked at her in silence.

  ‘Where are all the Ivins and Kornakovs now? You remember?’ she continued, gazing with a certain curiosity at my frightened, blushing face. ‘It was a wonderful time!’

  I was still unable to reply.

  I was temporarily delivered from that difficult position by the entry into the room of the elder Valakhina. I stood, bowed and again acquired the ability to speak, although, on the other hand, an odd change took place in Sonyechka with her mother’s arrival. All her cheerfulness and warmth disappeared and even her smile was different, and except for her height, she abruptly turned into the young lady returned from abroad I had imagined I would find in her. There didn’t seem to be any reason at all for the change, since her mother smiled just as pleasantly, and all her movements expressed the same gentleness as before. Mme Valakhina sat down on a small couch and indicated a place next to her. She said something to her daughter in English, and Sonyechka immediately left, which made it even easier for me. She then asked about my relativ
es, about my brother and about my father, and told me about her own misfortune – the loss of her husband, and then, sensing at the end that she had nothing more to tell me, she gazed at me in silence, as if to say, ‘If you get up now, bow and leave, you’ll be doing very well, my dear,’ but a strange thing happened to me. Sonyechka had returned with some work and taken a seat in a different corner of the drawing room where I could sense her looking at me. During Mme Valakhina’s story about the loss of her husband, I remembered once again that I was in love and thought, too, that the mother had very likely already guessed it, and another attack of shyness beset me, one so strong that I no longer felt capable of moving any of my limbs naturally. I knew that in order to stand up and leave I would have to think about where to put my feet and what to do with my head and hands; in a word, I felt much the same thing I had felt the previous evening after the half-bottle of champagne. I had a foreboding that I wouldn’t be able to manage any of it and thus could not stand up, and, in fact, could not. Mme Valakhina was probably surprised by my bright-red face and complete immobility, but I decided it would be better to sit in that inane position than risk standing up and making some sort of ludicrous exit. So I sat there quite a long time, hoping that some unanticipated event would extricate me from that position. The event presented itself in the person of an unattractive young man who came into the room with the air of a member of the household and politely bowed to me. Mme Valakhina got up and said with an apology that she had to speak to her homme d’affaires,42 the whole time gazing at me with a puzzled look that said, ‘If you want to sit there forever, I won’t chase you out.’ Making a terrific effort, I somehow got to my feet, although bowing was beyond my ability, and on my way out to the accompanying sympathetic gazes of mother and daughter, I tripped over a chair that wasn’t even in my way, and tripped over it because all my attention had been focused on not tripping over the rug that lay under my feet. Once I was outside in the fresh air, however, and after I had writhed and moaned so loudly that even Kuzma had asked me several times ‘How can I help?’ the feeling evaporated, and I began to reflect quite calmly on my love for Sonyechka and her relationship with her mother, which had seemed so strange. When I mentioned to my father afterwards about noticing that Mme Valakhina and her daughter weren’t on good terms, he said, ‘Yes, she torments her with her awful stinginess, the poor thing, and it’s strange, since she used to be such a charming, sweet, wonderful woman!’ he added with stronger feeling than he could have had for a mere relation. ‘I can’t understand why she’s changed so much. You didn’t see her private secretary or whatever he is there, did you? And what’s a Russian gentlewoman doing with a private secretary, anyway?’ he said, as he angrily stepped away from me.

  ‘I did see him,’ I answered.

  ‘Well, was he good-looking, at least?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t good-looking at all.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Papa said, angrily shrugging his shoulder and coughing …

  ‘So I’m in love,’ I thought as I continued on my way in my droshky.

  NINETEEN

  The Kornakovs

  The second call on my way was at the Kornakovs. They occupied the bel étage43 of a large building on Arbat Street. The stairway was exceptionally smart and neat, but not luxurious. There were striped hemp mats secured with gleaming brass rods lying everywhere, but no flowers or mirrors. The salon, over whose brightly polished floor I crossed to get to the drawing room, was just as austerely, coldly and neatly furnished. Everything shone and had a sturdy if not particularly new look, but there weren’t any pictures or curtains or other ornaments visible anywhere. I found several young princesses in the drawing room. They were all sitting so primly and idly that you could tell at once that they sat that way only when they had company.

  ‘Maman will be out in a moment,’ the oldest one said after coming over to sit down beside me. For a quarter of an hour she engaged me in conversation so adroitly and fluently that it never flagged for a moment. But it was too obvious that she was trying to divert me, so I didn’t like her. She told me in passing that their brother Stepan – the one they called ‘Étienne’ and who two years before had been enrolled in the Cadet School44 – had already received his commission. When she spoke of her brother, and especially of the fact that he had joined the hussars against his mother’s wishes, she made a frightened face and all the younger princesses, who were sitting quietly, made frightened faces too; when she spoke of Grandmother’s passing, she made a sad face and all the younger princesses made sad faces too; and when she recalled my striking St-Jérôme and being led away, she laughed and showed her bad teeth, and all the other princesses laughed and showed their bad teeth too.

  Then their mother came in – the same small, spare woman with restless eyes and the habit of looking at others whenever she was talking to you. She took my hand and raised her own to my lips to kiss, which, not considering it necessary, I certainly wouldn’t have done otherwise.

  ‘How glad I am to see you,’ she began with her usual volubility, while turning around to look at her daughters. ‘He really does look like his maman. Isn’t that true, Lise?’

  Lise said that it was true, although I knew for certain that there wasn’t the least resemblance between Mama and me.

  ‘Well, you certainly have become very grown-up! And my Étienne, you remember him, since he’s your second cousin … No, not your second, but what, Lise? My mother was Varvara Dmitriyevna, daughter of Dmitry Nikolayevich, and your grandmother was Natalya Nikolayevna.’

  ‘Then they’re third cousins, maman,’ the oldest princess said.

  ‘Oh, you’re always getting everything mixed up!’ her mother yelled angrily. ‘No, definitely not third cousins but issus de germains,45 that’s what you and my little Étienne are. Did you know that he’s already an officer? Only it’s bad that he has so much freedom now. You young people need to be kept firmly in hand and that’s all! Now don’t be cross with your old aunt for speaking the truth to you. I was strict with Étienne, and found it necessary to be.

  ‘So, here’s how we’re related,’ she continued. ‘Prince Ivan Ivanych is my uncle and your mother’s uncle. So it follows that she and I were first, or no, second cousins – yes, that’s right. Well, tell me then, my friend, have you been to see Prinz Ivan?’

  I said that I hadn’t, but would be going later in the day.

  ‘Oh, how can that be!’ she exclaimed. ‘That should have been the first call you made! Why, Prinz Ivan is the same thing as a father to you, you know. He hasn’t any children of his own, which means that you and my children are his only heirs. You should respect him for his years and his position in society and everything else. I know that kinship no longer counts with you young people today and that you don’t care for old people, but you listen to me, your old auntie, because I love you and I loved your maman and I loved your grandmother, too, very, very much and respected her. No, you go and see him and you do so without fail, without fail.’

  I said that I certainly would, and since the present call had, in my opinion, already lasted long enough, I stood up and was about to leave when she stopped me.

  ‘No, wait a moment. Where’s your father, Lise? Call him in here. He’ll be so glad to see you,’ she continued to me.

  About two minutes later Prince Mikhailo really did come into the room. He was a short, stocky gentleman, very sloppily dressed, unshaven and with such an indifferent expression on his face that it even looked like a stupid one. He wasn’t in the least glad to see me, or if he was he didn’t show it. But the princess, of whom he was obviously very afraid, said to him, ‘Isn’t it true how much Woldemar (she had apparently forgotten my name) looks like his maman?’ and made such a gesture with her eyes that the prince, obviously guessing what she wanted, came over to me with the same impassive, even disgruntled expression on his face and offered me his unshaven cheek, which I was obliged to kiss.

  ‘You s
till aren’t dressed and have to go out!’ the princess started to say to him immediately afterwards in the wrathful tone that seemed customary to her with her household. ‘You want to make people angry with you again, you want to antagonize them again?’

  ‘Right away, right away, Mama,’ Prince Mikhailo said and left the room. I bowed and left, too.

  It was the first time I heard that we were Prince Ivan Ivanych’s heirs, and the news struck me unpleasantly.

  TWENTY

  The Ivins

  It made thinking about the looming, essential call even more oppressive. But before going to the Prince’s I had to stop at the Ivins along the way. They lived on Tverskaya Street in a beautiful house of enormous size. It wasn’t without fear that I went up the front steps, at the top of which stood a doorman with a mace.

  ‘Are they at home?’ I asked.

  ‘Whom do you want? The general’s son is in,’ the doorman replied.

  ‘And the general himself?’ I pluckily asked.

  ‘You’ll have to be announced. What is your command?’ the doorman said and rang. A footman’s feet in gaiters appeared on the stairway. I was so intimidated, although I have no idea why, that I told the footman not to announce me to the general, since I would see his son first. As I climbed the grand staircase, it seemed to me that I had been made terribly small, and not in the figurative but the actual meaning of the word. It was the same way I had felt driving up to the large front steps in my droshky: it seemed to me that the droshky and the horse and the driver had all been reduced in size. The general’s son was asleep on a sofa with an open book in front of him when I entered his room. His tutor, Herr Frost, who was still in their home, came into the room after me with his gallant stride and woke his charge. Ivin expressed no particular joy on seeing me, and I noticed that while conversing with me he directed his gaze at my eyebrows. Although he was very polite, it seemed to me that he was just trying to divert me the same way the young princess had and felt no particular interest in me, having no need of my acquaintance, since he very likely had his own, different circle of friends. I divined all that mainly from the fact that he looked at my eyebrows. In short, his attitude towards me, however unpleasant it is for me to admit, was virtually the same as my own towards Ilenka. I was starting to get irritated and intercept every glance of Ivin’s, and whenever his and Frost’s eyes met, I took it to mean, ‘Why did he come to see us?’