Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  And despite the expression of indifference on his face, I did tell him about my love and all my plans for future married happiness. And it’s strange that the instant I told him in detail about the strength of my feeling, I sensed it start to wane.

  The shower caught us just as we had turned onto an avenue of birches leading up to the house. But it didn’t soak us. I only knew that it was raining because several drops had fallen on my nose and hand, and because something had begun to smack the sticky young leaves of the birches, which, letting their luxuriant branches hang still, seemed to draw in those pure, clear drops with a pleasure that expressed itself in the strong fragrance with which they filled the avenue. We got out of the phaeton and ran through the garden to the house. But right by the entrance we met four ladies coming with rapid steps in the opposite direction, two of them with handiwork, one with a book and another with a Bolognese.49 Dmitry at once introduced me to his mother, sister, aunt and Lyubov Sergeyevna. They stopped for a moment, and then the rain began to fall harder and harder.

  ‘Let’s go up on the veranda and you can introduce him again,’ said the one I took to be Dmitry’s mother, and together with the ladies we mounted the stairs.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Nekhlyudovs

  Of that whole company I was most struck in the first moments by Lyubov Sergeyevna, who, holding the Bolognese in her arms and wearing heavy knitted slippers, went up the stairs after the others, pausing a few times to look back at me intently and then immediately kiss her little dog. She was quite unattractive: red-haired, short, thin, with slightly lopsided hips. Her homely face was made even homelier by her strange coiffure parted on the side (it was the sort of coiffure that women with thinning hair devise for themselves). As hard as I tried out of loyalty to my friend, I still couldn’t find a single attractive feature in her. Even her hazel eyes, although good-natured, were tiny and dull and definitely homely, and her hands, that distinguishing feature, although small and not badly formed, were red and rough.

  After I had joined them on the veranda, each lady said a few words to me before taking up her work again – all except Dmitry’s sister Varenka, who merely gave me a searching look with her large, dark-grey eyes and then started to read out loud from the book she was holding in her lap, having kept her place with her finger.

  Princess Marya Ivanovna was a tall, graceful woman of about forty. One might have said more, given the locks of greying hair frankly showing from under her mobcap, but her fresh, remarkably soft face with almost no lines, and especially the lively, merry brilliance of her large eyes, made her seem much younger. Her eyes were hazel and very round, her lips were too thin and somewhat severe, while her nose was quite straight but turned a little to the left. Her hands were ringless and large, almost masculine, with long beautiful fingers. She was wearing a dark-blue high-necked dress that tightly fitted her slender, still young waist, which she clearly meant to show off. She sat remarkably straight, sewing some garment. After I came up onto the veranda she took me by the hand, drew me to herself, as if wishing to get a better look at me, and then, while gazing at me with the same slightly cold, frank gaze that she shared with her son, said that she had long known about me from Dmitry’s stories, and that in order for me to get to know them properly, she was inviting me to spend the night.

  ‘Do whatever you’re of a mind to do without being the least shy with us, just as we won’t be shy with you either. Go for a walk, read, listen or nap, if that’s more fun for you,’ she added.

  Sofya Ivanovna was an old maid and the princess’s younger sister, although she seemed older. She had that distinctive, overstuffed figure met with in short, very stout old maids who wear corsets. It was as if all her vitality had been thrust up with such force that it threatened at any moment to strangle her. She couldn’t bring her short, plump little arms together under the arched promontory of her bodice, nor could she see the ever so tightly laced bodice itself.

  Although Princess Marya Ivanovna had dark hair and eyes and Sofya Ivanovna was blonde with large, vivacious and at the same time (which is very rare) calm blue eyes, there was a strong family resemblance between the two sisters: the same expression, the same nose and the same lips, although Sofya Ivanovna’s were a little broader and fuller and moved to the right when she smiled, while the princess’s moved to the left. Judging by her clothes and coiffure, Sofya Ivanovna was apparently still trying to look young and wouldn’t have revealed her grey locks, if she had any. Her gaze and the way she addressed me seemed very proud at first and disconcerted me, whereas I was completely at ease with the princess. Perhaps Sofya Ivanovna’s stoutness and a certain striking resemblance to a portrait of Catherine the Great gave her a proud look in my eyes, but I was completely disconcerted when she looked at me and said, ‘The friends of our friends are our friends.’ I calmed down and abruptly changed my view of her, however, when, after saying those words, she fell silent and then opened her mouth and sighed heavily. Probably because of her stoutness, it was her habit after saying a few words to sigh deeply while opening her mouth a little and slightly rolling her large blue eyes. Such sweet good nature was somehow expressed in the habit that after that sigh I lost all my fear of her and even liked her very much. Her eyes were charming, her voice was resonant and pleasing, and even the very round lines of her figure seemed, at that time of my youth, to be not without beauty.

  As a friend of my friend, Lyubov Sergeyevna should, I supposed, at that point have immediately said something very amiable and heartfelt, and she even gazed at me quite a long time in silence, as if unsure whether it might not be too amiable to say whatever she had in mind, but then she ended her silence only to ask me what university department I was in. Then she stared at me quite intently again for a long time, evidently wondering whether or not to say that amiable, heartfelt thing, while I, upon noticing her uncertainty, entreated her with a facial expression to say it all, but she only remarked, ‘They say that there aren’t very many studying the sciences at the university now,’ and beckoned to her little dog, Suzette.

  The remarks made by Lyubov Sergeyevna the entire evening were for the most part neither to the point nor even related to each other, but I so believed in Dmitry, and he looked so anxiously first at me and then at her with an expression that asked, ‘Well, then?’ that even though I was convinced in my heart that there was nothing special about her, I was, as often happens, still very far from voicing that thought to myself.

  The last member of the family, Varenka, was a very plump young woman of about sixteen. Her only attractive features were her large, dark-grey eyes, extraordinarily like her aunt’s in their blend of vivacity and calm attention, her very long chestnut braid, and her extraordinarily soft, beautiful hands.

  ‘I suspect it must be tedious for you, Monsieur Nicolas, to hear the story from the middle,’ Sofya Ivanovna said to me with her good-natured sigh, while turning over the pieces of the garment she was sewing.

  The reading had stopped for a moment while Dmitry went off somewhere.

  ‘Or perhaps you’ve already read Rob Roy?’50

  If only because of my student’s uniform, I felt obliged at the time with people I didn’t know well to answer every question, even the simplest one, very ‘cleverly’ and ‘originally’, and considered brief, clear answers like ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘it’s boring’, ‘it’s fun’ and so on to be highly disgraceful. After a glance at my fashionable new trousers and the shiny buttons of my frock coat, I replied that I hadn’t read Rob Roy, but that it was still very interesting for me to listen, since I actually preferred to read books from the middle rather than the beginning.

  ‘It’s twice as interesting: you have to guess both what went before and what comes after,’ I added with a satisfied grin.

  The princess laughed a seemingly unnatural laugh (I soon realized that she had no other).

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s true,’ she said. ‘So, Nicolas, will you be in Mo
scow long? You don’t mind if I drop the monsieur, do you? When are you leaving?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps we’ll stay on a good deal longer,’ I said for some reason, even though we would most certainly be leaving the next day.

  ‘I had hoped that you could stay on, both for you and for my Dmitry,’ the princess observed, while gazing at something off in the distance. ‘Friendship’s a fine thing at your age.’

  I sensed that everyone was looking at me to see how I would answer, although Varenka pretended to examine her aunt’s work. I sensed that I was being given a sort of examination, and that I needed to show myself as advantageously as possible.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Dmitry’s friendship is helpful to me, even if I’m unable to be of any use to him, since he’s a thousand times better than I am.’ (Dmitry couldn’t hear what I was saying, or else I would have been afraid he would detect the insincerity of my words.)

  The princess again laughed the unnatural laugh that was natural to her.

  ‘Well, to hear him tell it,’ she said, c’est vous qui êtes un petit monstre de perfection!’51

  ‘Un monstre de perfection – that’s excellent. I’ll have to remember it,’ I thought.

  ‘Actually, leaving you out of it, he’s a master at that,’ she continued after lowering her voice (which especially pleased me) and indicating Lyubov Sergeyevna with her eyes. ‘In poor Auntie,’ as they called Lyubov Sergeyevna among themselves, ‘whom with her Suzette I’ve known for twenty years, he’s found perfections that I never suspected … Varya, tell them to bring me a glass of water,’ she added, once again looking off into the distance, very likely having found it too early or not even necessary to let me in on the family relationships, ‘or no, let him go. He isn’t doing anything and you can continue to read. Go right through the door, my friend, and then after fifteen paces stop and say in a loud voice, “Pyotr, bring Marya Ivanovna a glass of water with ice,”’ she said to me, softly laughing her unnatural laugh again.

  ‘She probably wants to talk about me,’ I thought as I went out. ‘She probably wants to say that she’s observed that I’m a very, very clever young man.’ I hadn’t yet gone the fifteen paces when the stout, panting Sofya Ivanovna overtook me with quick, light steps.

  ‘Merci, mon cher,’52 she said. ‘I’m going that way and will tell them myself.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Love

  Sofya Ivanovna, as I later came to know her, was one of those rare, no longer young women who are born for family life, but whom fate has denied that happiness, and who, as a result of that denial, decide to lavish on a chosen few all the love for children and a husband that has been stored, grown and nurtured in their hearts for so long. And the supply of love in no longer young women of that kind is so inexhaustible that even when the chosen are many, a great deal of love still remains, which they lavish on everyone around them, on all the good and bad people they come across in their lives.

  There are three kinds of love:

  1) Beautiful love

  2) Self-immolating love

  3) Practical love

  I’m speaking not of the love of a young man for a young woman, or the reverse. I fear such tenderness, and have been so unlucky in life that I never saw in love of that kind a single spark of truth, but only mendacity in which sensuality, conjugal relations, money and a desire to bind or unbind one’s hands so muddled the feeling that it was impossible to make any sense of it at all. I’m speaking of a love for others that – depending on the greater or lesser power of the soul – is focused on a single person or on several people or is lavished on many – of love for a mother, a father, a brother, or children, or for a comrade, a woman friend, or a compatriot, of a love for others.

  ‘Beautiful love’ is love for the beauty of the feeling itself and its expression. For people who love this way, the object of love is lovable only to the extent that he arouses the pleasurable feeling in the awareness and expression of which they find enjoyment. Those who love with a beautiful love care little about mutuality or circumstances that have no bearing on the beauty or pleasure of their feeling. They frequently exchange the objects of their love, since their main goal is the constant arousal of the pleasurable feeling of love. To sustain that feeling in themselves, they constantly speak in the most elegant terms of their love not only to its object but also to everyone else, including those who care nothing about it. In our country, people of a certain class who love ‘beautifully’ not only tell everyone about their love but invariably do so in French. It’s a strange and ridiculous thing to say, but I’m sure that there have been and still are many people of a certain milieu, especially women, whose love for their friends, husbands and children would be destroyed at once, were they simply forbidden to talk about it in French.

  The second kind, ‘self-immolating love’, is love of the act of sacrificing oneself for the object of love without considering whether the object is better or worse off for those sacrifices. ‘There’s no distress to which I wouldn’t subject myself to prove to the world and to him or to her the extent of my devotion.’ Such is the formula for this kind of love. People who love this way never believe in mutuality (since it’s worthier to sacrifice myself for someone who doesn’t appreciate me) and are always sickly, which increases the merit of the sacrifice; they are for the most part steadfast, since it would be hard for them to forfeit the value of the sacrifices they’ve made for the object of their love; and they’re always ready to die to prove to him or her their complete devotion, even though they neglect the minor, everyday demonstrations of love that require no particular eruptions of self-immolation. They don’t care if you ate or slept well or are enjoying yourself or are healthy, and they’ll do nothing to obtain those comforts for you, even if it’s within their power to do so; but face a bullet, jump into water or fire, or pine away from love – they’re always ready for those, if only given the opportunity. Moreover, people who are prone to self-immolating love are always proud of their love, as well as demanding, jealous and suspicious and, strange to say, ready to wish dangers on their objects from which to rescue them, calamities about which to console them, and even vices in which to correct them.

  You live alone in the country with your wife, who loves you with a self-immolating love. You’re healthy and secure. You have things to do that you enjoy, but your loving wife is so weak that she can manage neither the household, which has been turned over to the servants, nor the children, who have been given up to nurses, nor even any occupation that she might like, and all because she loves nothing but you. She seems to be ill, but not wanting to distress you, she’s reluctant to tell you; she seems to be bored, but for your sake she’s prepared to be bored her whole life; it seems to oppress her that you’re intently absorbed in your activities (whatever they may be: hunting, books, managing the estate, service) for she sees that those activities will be your undoing, but says nothing and endures them. But then you fall ill, and your loving wife forgets her own illness and, despite your entreaties not to torment herself needlessly, is continually at your bedside, and every second you feel on you her compassionate gaze that says, ‘Well, I said as much, but I don’t care, and even so I won’t leave you.’ In the morning you’re a little better and you go into the next room. It’s unheated and a mess. The soup that’s the only thing you can eat hasn’t been ordered from the cook, nor has your medicine been sent for, but although exhausted by her nocturnal vigil, your loving wife still looks at you with the same compassionate gaze, walks on tiptoe, and in a whisper gives the servants vague, unfamiliar instructions. You want to read, but your loving wife says to you with a sigh that she knows you won’t listen to her and will be angry with her, although she’s quite used to it, but it would be better if you didn’t read. You want to take a walk around the room, but it would be better if you didn’t do that either. You want to talk to a friend who has come, but it would be better for you
not to talk. At night you have a fever again, and you want to doze off, but your loving wife, thin, pale and sighing from time to time, sits across from you in an armchair in the half-light of the night lamp, and with every little movement, every little sound, provokes feelings of irritation and impatience in you. You have a servant with whom you have lived nearly twenty years and are used to, and who takes excellent care of you, and does so with pleasure, since he’s well rested during the day and gets paid for his services, but she won’t permit him to look after you. She does everything herself with her feeble, inept fingers, which you can’t help following with suppressed hostility as they vainly try to open a vial or put out a candle or pour medicine or squeamishly reach towards you. If you’re an impatient, irritable sort and ask her to leave, you will, in your illness and exasperation, hear her submissively sighing and weeping on the other side of the door and whispering some sort of nonsense to your man. If in the end you’re still alive, your loving wife, who hasn’t slept the twenty nights you were ill (as she constantly reminds you), herself falls ill, wastes away, suffers, and is even less capable of any activity, and then, when you’re well again, conveys her self-immolating love merely by the meek tedium that she involuntarily imparts to you and everyone around her.

  The third kind, ‘practical love’, strives to satisfy all the needs, desires, whims and even vices of the beloved being. People who love this way always love their whole lives, since the more they love, the more they come to know the object of their love and the easier it is for them to love, that is, to satisfy his desires. Rarely is their love expressed in words, but if it is, then not in a self-satisfied, beautiful way but in an embarrassed, awkward one, since such people are always afraid that they don’t love enough. They love even the vices of the beloved being, because those vices give them an opportunity to satisfy ever newer desires. They seek mutuality and even gladly deceive themselves about it and believe in it and are happy if they have it. But they love no less without it, and not only want happiness for the object of their love, but continually try to obtain it for him with all the mental and material means, both great and small, that lie within their power.