Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  When I opened my eyes and looked at him he suddenly addressed me resolutely and irritably:

  ‘Perhaps it is unpleasant for you to sit with me, knowing who I am? In that case I will go away.’

  ‘Oh no, not at all.’

  ‘Well then, won’t you have some? Only it’s very strong.’ He poured out some tea for me.

  ‘They talk … and they always lie …’ he remarked.

  ‘What are you speaking about?’ I asked.

  ‘Always about the same thing. About that love of theirs and what it is! Don’t you want to sleep?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then would you like me to tell you how that love led to what happened to me?’

  ‘Yes, if it will not be painful for you.’

  ‘No, it is painful for me to be silent. Drink the tea … or is it too strong?’

  The tea was really like beer, but I drank a glass of it.5 Just then the guard entered. Pózdnyshev followed him with angry eyes, and only began to speak after he had left.17

  III

  ‘WELL then, I’ll tell you.18 But do you really want to hear it?’ I repeated that I wished it very much. He paused, rubbed his face with his hands, and began:

  ‘If I am to tell it, I must tell everything from the beginning: I must tell how and why I married, and the kind of man I was before my marriage.19

  ‘Till my marriage I lived as everybody does, that is, everybody in our class. I am a landowner and a graduate of the university, and was a marshal of the gentry. Before my marriage I lived as everyone does, that is, dissolutely; and while living dissolutely I was convinced, like everybody in our class, that I was living as one has to. I thought I was a charming fellow and quite a moral man.20 I was not a seducer, had no unnatural tastes, did not make that the chief purpose of my life as many of my associates did, but I practised debauchery in a steady, decent way for health’s sake.21 I avoided women who might tie my hands by having a child or by attachment for me. However, there may have been children and attachments, but I acted as if there were not. And this I not only considered moral, but I was even proud of it.’

  He paused and gave vent to his peculiar sound, as he evidently did whenever a new idea occurred to him.

  ‘And you know, that is the chief abomination!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dissoluteness does not lie in anything physical – no kind of physical misconduct is debauchery; real debauchery lies precisely in freeing oneself from moral relations with a woman with whom you have physical intimacy. And such emancipation I regarded as a merit. I remember how I once worried because I had not had an opportunity to pay a woman who gave herself to me (having probably taken a fancy to me) and how I only became tranquil after having sent her some money – thereby intimating that I did not consider myself in any way morally bound to her … Don’t nod as if you agreed with me,’ he suddenly shouted at me. ‘Don’t I know these things? We all, and you too unless you are a rare exception, hold those same views, just as I used to. Never mind, I beg your pardon, but the fact is that it’s terrible, terrible, terrible!’

  ‘What is terrible?’ I asked.

  ‘That abyss of error in which we live22 regarding women and our relations with them. No, I can’t speak calmly about it, not because of that “episode”, as he called it, in my life, but because since that “episode” occurred my eyes have been opened and I have seen everything in quite a different light. Everything reversed, everything reversed!’

  He lit a cigarette and began to speak, leaning his elbows on his knees.

  It was too dark to see his face, but, above the jolting of the train, I could hear his impressive and pleasant voice.

  IV

  ‘YES, only after such torments as I have endured, only by their means, have I understood where the root of the matter lies – understood what ought to be, and therefore seen all the horror of what is.23

  ‘So you will see how and when that which led up to my “episode” began. It began when I was not quite sixteen. It happened when I still went to the grammar school and my elder brother was a first-year student at the university. I had not yet known any woman, but, like all the unfortunate children of our class, I was no longer an innocent boy. I had been depraved two years before that by other boys. Already woman, not some particular woman but woman as something to be desired, woman, every woman, woman’s nudity, tormented me. My solitude was not pure. I was tormented, as ninety-nine per cent. of our boys are. I was horrified, I suffered, I prayed, and I fell. I was already depraved in imagination and in fact, but I had not yet taken the last step. I was perishing, but I had not yet laid hands on another human being. But one day a comrade of my brother’s, a jolly student, a so-called good fellow, that is, the worst kind of good-for-nothing, who had taught us to drink and to play cards, persuaded us after a carousal to go there. We went. My brother was also still innocent, and he fell that same night. And I, a fifteen-year-old boy, defiled myself and took part in defiling a woman, without at all understanding what I was doing. I had never heard from any of my elders that what I was doing was wrong, you know. And indeed no one hears it now. It is true it is in the Commandments, but then the Commandments are only needed to answer the priest at Scripture examination, and even then they are not very necessary, not nearly as necessary as the commandment about the use of ut in conditional sentences in Latin.

  ‘And so I never heard those older persons whose opinions I respected say that it was an evil. On the contrary, I heard people I respected say it was good. I had heard that my struggles and sufferings would be eased after that. I heard this and read it, and heard my elders say it would be good for my health, while from my comrades I heard that it was rather a fine, spirited thing to do. So in general I expected nothing but good from it. The risk of disease? But that too had been foreseen. A paternal government saw to that. It sees to the correct working of the brothels,6 and makes profligacy safe for schoolboys. Doctors too deal with it for a consideration. That is proper. They assert that debauchery is good for the health, and they organize proper well-regulated debauchery. I know some mothers who attend to their sons’ health in that sense. And science sends them to the brothels.’

  ‘Why do you say “science”?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, who are the doctors? The priests of science. Who deprave youths24 by maintaining that this is necessary for their health? They do.

  ‘Yet if a one-hundredth part of the efforts devoted to the cure of syphilis were devoted to the eradication of debauchery, there would long ago not have been a trace of syphilis left. But as it is, efforts are made not to eradicate debauchery but to encourage it and to make debauchery safe. That is not the point however. The point is that with me – and with nine-tenths, if not more, not of our class only but of all classes, even the peasants – this terrible thing happens that happened to me; I fell not because I succumbed to the natural temptation of a particular woman’s charm – no, I was not seduced by a woman – but I fell because, in the set around me, what was really a fall was regarded by some as a most legitimate function good for one’s health, and by others as a very natural and not only excusable but even innocent amusement for a young man. I did not understand that it was a fall, but simply indulged in that half-pleasure, half-need, which, as was suggested to me, was natural at a certain age. I began to indulge in debauchery as I began to drink and to smoke. Yet in that first fall there was something special and pathetic. I remember that at once, on the spot before I left the room, I felt sad, so sad that I wanted to cry – to cry for the loss of my innocence and for my relationship with women, now sullied for ever. Yes, my natural, simple relationship with women was spoilt for ever. From that time I have not had, and could not have, pure relations with women. I had become what is called a libertine. To be a libertine is a physical condition like that of a morphinist, a drunkard, or a smoker. As a morphinist, a drunkard, or a smoker is no longer normal, so too a man who has known several women for his pleasure is not normal but is a man perverted for ever, a libertine. As a drunkard or
a morphinist can be recognized at once by his face and manner, so it is with a libertine. A libertine may restrain himself, may struggle, but he will never have those pure, simple, clear, brotherly relations with a woman. By the way he looks at a young woman and examines her, a libertine can always be recognized. And I had become and I remained a libertine, and it was this that brought me to ruin.

  V

  ‘AH, yes! After that things went from bad to worse, and there were all sorts of deviations. Oh, God! When I recall the abominations I committed in this respect I am seized with horror! And that is true of me, whom my companions, I remember, ridiculed for my so-called innocence. And when one hears of the “gilded youths”, of officers, of the Parisians …! And when all these gentlemen, and I – who have on our souls hundreds of the most varied and horrible crimes against women – when we thirty-year-old profligates, very carefully washed, shaved, perfumed, in clean linen and in evening dress or uniform, enter a drawing-room or ballroom, we are emblems of purity, charming!

  ‘Only think of what ought to be, and of what is! When in society such a gentleman comes up to my sister or daughter, I, knowing his life, ought to go up to him, take him aside, and say quietly, “My dear fellow, I know the life you lead, and how and with whom you pass your nights. This is no place for you. There are pure, innocent girls here. Be off!” That is what ought to be; but what happens is that when such a gentleman comes and dances, embracing our sister or daughter, we are jubilant, if he is rich and well-connected. Maybe after Rigulboche7 he will honour my daughter! Even if traces of disease remain, no matter! They are clever at curing that nowadays. Oh, yes, I know several girls in the best society whom their parents enthusiastically gave in marriage to men suffering from a certain disease. Oh, oh … the abomination of it! But a time will come when this abomination and falsehood will be exposed!’

  He made his strange noise several times and again drank tea. It was fearfully strong and there was no water with which to dilute it. I felt that I was much excited by the two glasses I had drunk. Probably the tea affected him too, for he became more and more excited. His voice grew increasingly mellow and expressive. He continually changed his position, now taking off his cap and now putting it on again, and his face changed strangely in the semi-darkness in which we were sitting.

  ‘Well, so I lived till I was thirty, not abandoning for a moment the intention of marrying and arranging for myself a most elevated and pure family life. With that purpose I observed the girls suitable for that end,’ he continued. ‘I weltered in a mire of debauchery and at the same time was on the look-out for a girl pure enough to be worthy of me.

  ‘I rejected many just because they were not pure enough to suit me, but at last I found one whom I considered worthy. She was one of two daughters of a once-wealthy Pénza landowner who had been ruined.

  ‘25One evening after we had been out in a boat and had returned by moonlight, and I was sitting beside her admiring her curls and her shapely figure in a tight-fitting jersey, I suddenly decided that it was she! It seemed to me that evening that she understood all that I felt and thought, and that what I felt and thought was very lofty. In reality it was only that the jersey and the curls were particularly becoming to her and that after a day spent near her I wanted to be still closer.

  ‘It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

  ‘I returned home in rapture, decided that she was the acme of moral perfection, and that therefore she was worthy to be my wife, and I proposed to her next day.

  ‘26What a muddle it is! Out of a thousand men who marry (not only among us but unfortunately also among the masses) there is hardly one who has not already been married ten, a hundred, or even, like Don Juan, a thousand times, before his wedding.

  ‘It is true as I have heard and have myself observed that there are nowadays some chaste young men who feel and know that this thing is not a joke but an important matter.

  ‘God help them! But in my time there was not one such in ten thousand. And everybody knows this and pretends not to know it. In all the novels they describe in detail the heroes’ feelings and the ponds and bushes beside which they walk, but when their great love for some maiden is described, nothing is said about what has happened to these interesting heroes before: not a word about their frequenting certain houses, or about the servant-girls, cooks, and other people’s wives! If there are such improper novels they are not put into the hands of those who most need this information – the unmarried girls.

  ‘We first pretend to these girls that the profligacy which fills half the life of our towns, and even of the villages, does not exist at all.

  ‘Then we get so accustomed to this pretence that at last, like the English, we ourselves really begin to believe that we are all moral people and live in a moral world. The girls, poor things, believe this quite seriously. So too did my unfortunate wife. I remember how, when we were engaged, I showed her my diary, from which she could learn something, if but a little, of my past, especially about my last liaison, of which she might hear from others, and about which I therefore felt it necessary to inform her. I remember her horror, despair, and confusion, when she learnt of it and understood it. I saw that she then wanted to give me up. And why did she not do so?…27’

  He again made that sound, swallowed another mouthful of tea, and remained silent for a while.

  VI

  ‘NO, after all, it is better, better so!’ he exclaimed. ‘It serves me right! But that’s not to the point – I meant to say that it is only the unfortunate girls who are deceived.

  ‘The mothers know it, especially mothers educated by their own husbands – they know it very well. While pretending to believe in the purity of men, they act quite differently. They know with what sort of bait to catch men for themselves and for their daughters.

  ‘You see it is only we men who don’t know (because we don’t wish to know) what women know very well, that the most exalted poetic love, as we call it, depends not on moral qualities but on physical nearness and on the coiffure, and the colour and cut of the dress. Ask an expert coquette who has set herself the task of captivating a man, which she would prefer to risk: to be convicted in his presence of lying, of cruelty, or even of dissoluteness, or to appear before him in an ugly and badly made dress – she will always prefer the first. She knows that we are continually lying about high sentiments, but really only want her body and will therefore forgive any abomination except an ugly tasteless costume that is in bad style.

  ‘A coquette knows that consciously, and every innocent girl knows it unconsciously just as animals do.

  ‘That is why there are those detestable jerseys, bustles, and naked shoulders, arms, almost breasts. A woman, especially if she has passed the male school, knows very well that all the talk about elevated subjects is just talk, but that what a man wants is her body and all that presents it in the most deceptive but alluring light; and she acts accordingly.28 If we only throw aside our familiarity with this indecency, which has become a second nature to us, and look at the life of our upper classes as it is, in all its shamelessness – why, it is simply a brothel … You don’t agree? Allow me, I’ll prove it,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘You say that the women of our society have other interests in life than prostitutes have, but I say no, and will prove it. If people differ in the aims of their lives, by the inner content of their lives, this difference will necessarily be reflected in externals and their externals will be different. But look at those unfortunate despised women and at the highest society ladies: the same costumes, the same fashions, the same perfumes, the same exposure of arms, shoulders, and breasts, the same tight skirts over prominent bustles, the same passion for little stones, for costly, glittering objects, the same am
usements, dances, music, and singing. As the former employ all means to allure, so do these others.29

  VII

  ‘WELL, so these jerseys and curls and bustles caught me!

  ‘It was very easy to catch me for I was brought up in the conditions in which amorous young people are forced like cucumbers in a hot-bed. You see our stimulating super-abundance of food, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but a systematic excitement of desire.30 Whether this astonishes you or not, it is so. Why, till quite recently I did not see anything of this myself, but now I have seen it. That is why it torments me that nobody knows this, and people talk such nonsense as that lady did.

  ‘Yes, last spring some peasants were working in our neighbourhood on a railway embankment. The usual food of a young peasant is rye-bread, kvas, and onions; he keeps alive and is vigorous and healthy; his work is light agricultural work. When he goes to railway-work his rations are buck-wheat porridge and a pound of meat a day. But he works off that pound of meat during his sixteen hours’ work wheeling barrow-loads of half-a-ton weight, so it is just enough for him. But we who every day consume two pounds of meat, and game, and fish and all sorts of heating foods and drinks – where does that go to? Into excesses of sensuality. And if it goes there and the safety-valve is open, all is well; but try and close the safety-valve, as I closed it temporarily, and at once a stimulus arises which, passing31 through the prism of our artificial life, expresses itself in utter infatuation, sometimes even platonic. And I fell in love as they all do.

  ‘Everything was there to hand: raptures, tenderness, and poetry. In reality that love of mine was the result, on the one hand of her mamma’s and the dressmakers’ activity, and on the other of the super-abundance of food consumed by me while living an idle life. If on the one hand there had been no boating, no dressmaker with her waists and so forth, and had my wife been sitting at home in a shapeless dressing-gown, and had I on the other hand been in circumstances normal to man – consuming just enough food to suffice for the work I did, and had the safety-valve been open – it happened to be closed at the time – I should not have fallen in love and nothing of all this would have happened.