Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘Eh, Dmítri Nikoláevich, why are you moping? There are worse troubles! It will pass – be sure it will …’

  ‘But I’m not moping. What has put that into your head, Malánya Finogénovna?’ replied Nekhlyúdov trying to smile.

  ‘How can you help moping – don’t I see?’ the old nurse retorted warmly. ‘All alone the whole day long. And you take everything so to heart and see to everything yourself – and now you hardly eat anything. Is it reasonable? If only you went to town or visited your neighbours, but who ever saw the likes of this? You are young to trouble so about everything.… Excuse me, master, I’ll sit down,’ she continued, taking a chair near the door. ‘Why, you’ve been so indulgent with them that they’re not afraid of anyone. Does a master behave like that? There is nothing good in it; you only ruin yourself and let the people get spoilt. Our people are like that: they don’t understand it – really they don’t. You might at least go to see your aunt. What she wrote was true.…’ she ended admonishingly.

  Nekhlyúdov grew more and more dejected. He wearily touched the keys with his right hand, his elbow resting on his knee. Some sort of chord resulted, then another, and another.… He drew up his chair, took his other hand out of his pocket and began to play. The chords he struck were sometimes unprepared and not even quite correct; they were often trivial and commonplace, and did not indicate that he had any musical talent, but this occupation gave him a kind of indefinite, melancholy pleasure. At every change of harmony he waited with bated breath to see how it would resolve itself, and when a fresh harmony resulted his imagination vaguely supplied what was lacking. It seemed to him that he heard hundreds of melodies: a chorus and an orchestra in conformity with his harmony. What chiefly gave him pleasure was the intensified activity of his imagination which incoherently and fragmentarily, but with amazing clearness, presented him with the most varied, confused, and absurd pictures and images of the past and the future. Now it was the plump figure of White David responding to torment and privation with patience and submission: he saw his round shoulders, his immense hands covered with white hair, and his white lashes fluttering timidly at the sight of his mother’s brown sinewy fist. Then he saw his self-confident wet-nurse, emboldened by residence at the master’s house, and he imagined her for some reason going about the village and preaching to the serfs that they should hide their money from the landlord, and he unconsciously repeated to himself: ‘Yes, one must hide one’s money from the landlord.’ Then suddenly the small brown head of his future wife – for some reason in tears – presented itself to him, resting on his shoulder. Then he saw Chúris’s kindly blue eyes looking tenderly at his pot-bellied little son. ‘Yes, he sees in him not only a son, but a helper and deliverer. That is love!’ whispered Nekhlyúdov to himself. Then he remembered Epifán’s mother and the patient, all-forgiving expression he had noticed on her aged face in spite of her one protruding tooth and ugly features. ‘Probably I am the first person in the whole seventy years of her life to notice that,’ he thought, and whispering, ‘Strange!’ he unconsciously continued to touch the keys and listen to the sounds they produced. Then he vividly recalled his flight from the apiary and the expression on Ignát’s and Karp’s faces when they obviously wanted to laugh but pretended not to see him. He blushed, and involuntarily looked round at his nurse, who was still sitting silently by the door gazing intently at him and occasionally shaking her grey head. Then suddenly he seemed to see three sweating horses, and Ilyá’s fine powerful figure with his fair curls, his merrily beaming narrow blue eyes, his fresh ruddy cheeks, and the light-coloured down just beginning to appear on his lips and chin. He remembered how afraid Ilyá had been that he would not be allowed to go carting, and how warmly he had pleaded for that favourite job; and he suddenly saw a grey, misty early morning, a slippery highway and a long row of three-horsed carts, loaded high and covered by bast-matting marked with big black lettering. The strong-limbed, well-fed horses, bending their backs, tugging at the traces and jingling their bells, pull evenly uphill, tenaciously gripping the slippery road with their rough-shod hoofs. Rapidly descending the hill a mail-coach gallops towards the train of loaded carts, jingling its bells which re-echo far into the depth of the forest that extends along both sides of the road.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ shouts the driver of the first cart in a boyish voice. He has a brass number-plate on his felt hat and flourishes his whip above his head.

  Karp, with his red beard and gloomy looks, strides heavily in his huge boots beside the front wheel of the first cart. From the second cart Ilyá thrusts his handsome head out from under a piece of matting where he has been getting pleasantly warm in the early sunlight. Three tróykas loaded with boxes dash by with rattling wheels, jingling bells, and shouts. Ilyá again hides his handsome head under the matting and drops asleep. And now it is evening, clear and warm. The boarded gates open with a creak for the weary tróykas crowded together in the station yard, and one after another the high, mat-covered carts jolt over the board that lies in the gateway and come to rest under the roomy penthouse. Ilyá gaily exchanges greetings with the fair-faced, broad-bosomed hostess, who asks, ‘Have you come far? And how many of you will want supper?’ and with her bright kindly eyes looks with pleasure at the handsome lad. Now having seen to his horses he goes into the hot crowded house, crosses himself, sits down before a full wooden bowl, and chats merrily with the landlady and his comrades. And here, under the penthouse, is his place for the night, where the open starry sky is visible and where he will lie on the scented hay near the horses, which changing from foot to foot and snorting pick out the fodder from the wooden mangers. He goes up to the hay, turns to the east and, crossing his broad powerful chest some thirty times and shaking back his fair curls, repeats ‘Our Father’ and ‘Lord have mercy!’ some twenty times, covers himself head and all with his coat, and falls into the healthy careless sleep of strong young manhood. And now he dreams of the towns: Kiev with its saints and throngs of pilgrims, Rómen with its traders and merchandise, Odessa and the distant blue sea with its white sails, and Tsar-grad8 with its golden houses and white-breasted, dark-browed Turkish women – and thither he flies lifted on invisible wings. He flies freely and easily further and further, and sees below him golden cities bathed in bright radiance, and the blue sky with its many stars, and the blue sea with its white sails, and it is gladsome and gay to fly on further and further.…

  ‘Splendid!’ Nekhlyúdov whispered to himself, and the thought came to him: ‘Why am I not Ilyá?’

  1Two kopéks were about a halfpenny.

  2 Under serfdom a man and his wife had to work some days each week for the owner, and they were reckoned as one unit.

  3 The proprietors had to send a certain proportion of their serfs to serve in the army, but they had to be fit men with sound teeth.

  4 As to the desirability of flogging the peasants.

  5 The feast of St Peter and St Paul is June 9th, o.s.

  6 October 1st, o.s.

  7 A desyatín is nearly two and three-quarter acres.

  8 Constantinople.

  MEETING A MOSCOW ACQUAINTANCE IN THE DETACHMENT

  FROM PRINCE NEKHLYÚDOV’S CAUCASIAN MEMOIRS

  LIST OF CHARACTERS IN

  MEETING A MOSCOW ACQUAINTANCE

  GUSKÓV, nicknamed Guskantíni, condemned for punishment to serve as a private.

  PAUL DMÍTRICH, Adjutant.

  NICHOLAS IVÁNICH S—, Lieutenant-Captain; a good-natured officer.

  NIKÍTA, an Orderly.

  MAKATYÚK, another Orderly.

  ALEXÉY IVÁNICH, a Captain.

  ANDRÉEV, a soldier.

  WE were out with a detachment. The work in hand was almost done, the cutting through the forest was nearly finished, and we were expecting every day to receive orders from head-quarters to retire to the fort.

  Our division of the battery guns was placed on the slope of a steep mountain range which stretched down to the rapid little mountain river Mechik, and we h
ad to command the plain in front. Occasionally, especially towards evening, on this picturesque plain beyond the range of our guns, groups of peaceable mountaineers on horseback appeared here and there, curious to see the Russian camp. The evening was clear, quiet, and fresh, as December evenings usually are in the Caucasus. The sun was setting behind the steep spur of the mountain range to the left, and threw rosy beams on the tents scattered over the mountain side, on the moving groups of soldiers, and on our two guns, standing as if with outstretched necks, heavy and motionless, on the earthwork battery close by. The infantry picket, stationed on a knoll to our left, was sharply outlined against the clear light of the sunset, with its piles of arms, the figure of its sentry, its group of soldiers, and the smoke of its dying camp-fire. To right and to left, half-way down the hill, white tents gleamed on the trodden black earth, and beyond the tents loomed the bare black trunks of the plane forest, where axes continually rang, fires crackled, and trees fell crashing down. On all sides the pale bluish smoke rose in columns towards the frosty blue sky. Beyond the tents, and on the low ground by the stream, Cossacks, dragoons, and artillery drivers trailed along, returning from watering their stamping and snorting horses. It was beginning to freeze; all sounds were heard with unusual distinctness, and one could see far into the plain through the clear rarefied air. The groups of natives, no longer exciting the curiosity of our men, rode quietly over the light-yellow stubble of the maize-fields. Here and there through the trees could be seen the tall posts of Tartar cemeteries, and the smoke of their aouls.

  Our tent was pitched near the guns, on a dry and elevated spot whence the view was specially extensive. By the tent, close to the battery, we had cleared a space for the games of Gorodki1 or Choushki. Here the attentive soldiers had erected for us rustic seats and a small table. Because of all these conveniences our comrades the artillery officers, and some of the infantry, liked to assemble at our battery, and called this place ‘The Club’.

  It was a beautiful evening, the best players had come, and we were playing Gorodki. I, Ensign D., and Lieutenant O. lost two games running, and to the general amusement and laughter of the onlooking officers, and of soldiers and orderlies who were watching us from their tents, we twice carried the winners pick-a-back from one end of the ground to the other. Specially amusing was the position of the enormous, fat Lieutenant-Captain S., who puffing and smiling good-humouredly, with his feet trailing on the ground, rode on the back of the small and puny Lieutenant O. But it was growing late. The orderlies brought three tumblers of tea without any saucers for the whole six of us, and having finished our game we came to the rustic seats. Near them stood a short, bandy-legged man whom we did not know, dressed in a sheepskin coat and with a large, white, long-woolled sheepskin cap on his head. As soon as we approached him he hesitatingly took off and put on his cap several times and repeatedly seemed on the point of coming up to us, but then stopped again. But probably having decided that he could no longer remain unnoticed, this stranger again raised his cap, and passing round us approached Lieutenant-Captain S.

  ‘Ah, Guskantini! Well, what is it, old chap?’ said S., still continuing to smile good-humouredly after his ride.

  Guskantini, as S. called him, put on his cap at once, and made as if to put his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat; but on the side turned to me I could see it had no pocket, so that his little red hand remained in an awkward position. I tried to make up my mind what this man could be (a cadet or an officer reduced to the ranks?), and without noticing that my attention (the attention of an unknown officer) confused him, I looked intently at his clothing and general appearance. He seemed to be about thirty. His small round grey eyes seemed to look sleepily and yet anxiously from under the dirty white wool which hung over his face from his shaggy cap. The thick irregular nose between the sunken cheeks accentuated his sickly, unnatural emaciation. His lips, only slightly covered by thin light-coloured moustaches, were continually in motion, as if trying to put on now one, now another expression. But all these expressions seemed unfinished; his face still kept its one predominant expression of mingled fear and hurry. His thin scraggy neck was enveloped in a green woollen scarf, partly hidden under his sheepskin coat. The coat was worn bare and was short; it was trimmed with dog’s fur round the collar and at the false pockets. He had greyish check trousers on, and soldier’s boots with short unblacked tops.

  ‘Please don’t trouble,’ said I, when he again raised his cap, looking timidly at me.

  He bowed with a grateful look, put on his cap, and taking from his trouser pocket a dirty calico tobacco-pouch tied with a cord, began to make a cigarette.

  It was not long since I myself had been a cadet; an old cadet who could no longer act the good-humoured attentive younger comrade to the officers, and a cadet without means. Understanding, therefore, all the wretchedness of such a position for a proud man no longer young, I felt for all who were in that state, and tried to discern their characters and the degree and direction of their mental capacities, in order to be able to judge the extent of their moral suffering. This cadet, or degraded officer, judging by his restless look and the purposely varying expression of his face, seemed to be far from stupid, but very self-conscious, and therefore very pitiable.

  Lieutenant-Captain S. proposed another game of Gorodki, the losers, besides carrying the winners pick-a-back, to stand a couple of bottles of claret, with rum, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, to make mulled wine, which was very popular in our detachment that winter because of the cold weather. Guskantini, as S. again called him, was also asked to join, but before beginning, evidently wavering between the pleasure this invitation gave him and fear of some kind, he led Lieutenant-Captain S. aside and whispered something into his ear. The good-natured Lieutenant-Captain slapped him on the stomach with the palm of his big fat hand, and answered aloud, ‘Never mind, old chap, I’ll give you credit!’

  When the game was finished, and when, the side of the lower-grade stranger having won, he should have ridden on one of our officers, Ensign D., the latter blushed, turned aside to the seats, and offered the stranger some cigarettes by way of ransom. When the mulled wine had been ordered, and one could hear Nikita’s bustling arrangements in the orderlies’ tent and how he sent a messenger for cinnamon and cloves, and could then see his back, first here and then there, bulging the dirty sides of the tent, – we, the seven of us, sat down by the little table, drinking tea in turns out of the three tumblers and looking out over the plain, which began to veil itself in evening twilight, while we talked and laughed over the different incidents of the game. The stranger in the sheepskin coat took no part in the conversation, persistently refused the tea I repeatedly offered him, and, sitting on the ground Tartar-fashion, made cigarettes one after the other out of tobacco-dust, and smoked them evidently not so much for his own pleasure as to give himself an appearance of being occupied. When it was mentioned that a retreat was expected next day, and that perhaps we should have a fight, he rose to his knees and, addressing only Lieutenant-Captain S., said that he had just been at home with the Adjutant and had himself written out the order to move next day. We were all silent while he spoke, and, though he was evidently abashed, we made him repeat this communication – highly interesting to us. He repeated what he had said, adding, however, that at the time the order arrived, he was with, and sat with, the Adjutant, with whom he lived.

  ‘Mind, if you are not telling us a lie, old chap, I must be off to my company to give some orders for to-morrow,’ said Lieutenant-Captain S.

  ‘No.… Why should?… Is it likely?… It is certain began the stranger, but stopped suddenly, having evidently determined to feel hurt, frowned unnaturally and, muttering something between his teeth, again began making cigarettes. But the dregs of tobacco-dust that he could extract from his pouch being insufficient, he asked S. to favour him with the loan of a cigarette. We long continued among ourselves that monotonous military chatter familiar to all who have been on campaign. We complained, e
ver in the same terms, of the tediousness and duration of the expedition; discussed our commanders in the same old way; and, just as often before, we praised one comrade, pitied another, were astonished that So-and-so won so much, and that So-and-so lost so much at cards, and so on and so on.

  ‘Our Adjutant has got himself into a mess, and no mistake,’ said Lieutenant-Captain S. ‘He always used to win when he was on the staff – whoever he sat down with he’d pluck clean – but now these last two months he does nothing but lose. He has not hit it off in this detachment! I should think he’s lost 1,000 rubles in money, and things for another 500: the carpet he won of Mukhin, Nikitin’s pistols, the gold watch from Sada’s that Vorontsov gave him – have all gone.’

  ‘Serves him right,’ said Lieutenant O.; ‘he gulled everybody, it was impossible to play with him.’

  ‘He gulled everybody, and now he himself is gravelled,’ and Lieutenant-Captain S. laughed good-naturedly. ‘Guskov, here, lives with him – the Adjutant nearly lost him one day at cards! Really! Am I not right, old chap?’ he said, turning to Guskov.

  Guskov laughed. It was a pitifully sickly laugh which completely changed the expression of his face. This change suggested to me the idea that I had seen and known the man before, besides, Guskov, his real name, was familiar to me. But how and when I had seen him I was quite unable to remember.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guskov, who kept raising his hand to his moustaches and letting it sink again without touching them, ‘Paul Dmitrich has been very unlucky this campaign: such a veine de malheur,’2 he added, in carefully spoken but good French, and I again thought I had met, and even often met, him somewhere. ‘I know Paul Dmitrich well; he has great confidence in me,’ continued he; ‘we are old acquaintances – I mean he is fond of me,’ he added, evidently alarmed at his own too bold assertion of being an old acquaintance of the Adjutant. ‘Paul Dmitrich plays remarkably well, but now it is incomprehensible what has happened to him; he seems quite lost – la chance a tourné,’3 he said, addressing himself chiefly to me.