by Leo Tolstoy
Few people like my grandmother remained for the prince – people of the same circle and upbringing with the same views about things and of the same age. He therefore especially valued his long friendship with her and always treated her with great respect.
I couldn’t stop staring at the prince. The deference that everyone showed him, his large epaulettes, the particular joy that Grandmother expressed on seeing him, and the fact that he was apparently the only person who wasn’t afraid of her and was free and easy in his dealings with her, even daring to call her ‘ma cousine’, inspired in me a respect that was equal to if not greater than the one I felt for Grandmother herself. When my poem was shown to him, he called me over and said, ‘Who knows, ma cousine, perhaps he’ll be another Derzhavin.’
Saying that, he pinched my cheek so hard that if I didn’t cry out, it was only because I realized I should take it as affection.
The other guests had departed, Papa and Volodya had gone out and the prince, Grandmother and I were left alone in the drawing room.
‘Why didn’t our dear Natalya Nikolayevna come too?’ the prince suddenly asked Grandmother after a brief silence.
‘Ah, mon cher,’ Grandmother replied, lowering her voice and resting her hand on the prince’s sleeve, ‘she probably would have, if she had been free to do as she wished. She wrote to me to say that Pierre had suggested it, but that she herself had refused, since they apparently have had no income at all this year, and as she wrote, “Moreover, there’s no reason this year for me to bring the whole household to Moscow. Lyubochka’s still too young, and as for the boys, I’m more comfortable with them there with you than I would have been with them here.” That’s all very fine!’ Grandmother continued in a tone that clearly meant that she viewed it as nothing of the sort. ‘Sending the boys here so they could learn something and get used to society was long overdue – what kind of education could they receive in the country? Why, the older one will soon be thirteen, and the other’s eleven. You’ve noticed, mon cousin, that they’re like absolute savages here. They don’t even know how to enter a room.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ the prince answered. ‘What’s the reason for the continual complaining about their disordered circumstances? He has a very good living, and Natasha’s Khabarovka, in whose theatre you and I used to play in our day – I know it like the back of my hand – is a splendid estate and should always produce an excellent income.’
‘I’ll tell you as a true friend,’ Grandmother stopped him with a rueful expression. ‘I think it’s all a subterfuge for him to live here by himself, and loaf about his clubs and dinners and goodness knows what else, while she doesn’t suspect a thing. You know her angelic goodness – she trusts him in everything. He persuaded her that the boys needed to be taken to Moscow and that she needed to remain behind in the country with that stupid governess, and she believed him. Let him tell her that the children should be beaten the way Princess Varvara Ilinishna beats hers, and she would, I think, agree to it at once,’ Grandmother said, turning around in her armchair with a look of utter contempt. ‘Yes, my friend,’ Grandmother continued, after a moment of silence while she picked up one of the new handkerchiefs to wipe away a welling tear, ‘I often think that he can neither appreciate her nor understand her, and that despite all her goodness and her love for him and all her efforts to hide her sorrow – as I know very well – she cannot be happy with him and, mark my words, if he doesn’t …’
Grandmother covered her face with her handkerchief.
‘Ah, ma bonne amie,’46 the prince said reprovingly, ‘I see that you still haven’t got any more sensible and continue as ever to grieve and weep over imaginary woes. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I’ve known him a long time, and I know him to be an attentive, kind and excellent husband, and, the main thing, to be the noblest of people, un parfait honnête homme.’47
Having overheard a conversation that I shouldn’t have, I tiptoed out of the room in great agitation.
NINETEEN
The Ivins
‘Volodya! Volodya! The Ivins!’ I started to yell on seeing out of the window three boys in fitted blue overcoats with beaver collars crossing over to our house from the other side of the street behind their foppish tutor.
The Ivins were relatives of ours and nearly the same age. We had made their acquaintance and become friends shortly after our arrival in Moscow.
The second Ivin, Seryozha, was a swarthy, curly-haired, snub-nosed boy with beautiful dark-blue eyes, very fresh red lips that rarely covered his slightly protruding upper row of white teeth and an exceptionally lively expression on his face. He never smiled but either gazed with complete seriousness or heartily laughed his sharp, ringing, extraordinarily appealing laugh. His unique beauty struck me at once. I felt an irresistible attraction to him. Seeing him was enough to make me happy, and all the powers of my soul were for a time concentrated on that desire: whenever I happened to pass three or four days without seeing him, I started to miss him and grew sad to the point of tears. All my dreams, asleep and awake, were of him; going to bed, I wanted to dream of him; closing my eyes, I saw him before me and cherished that apparition as the finest of pleasures. There was no one in the world in whom I would have confided that feeling, so much did I treasure it. But either because he was getting tired of my restless eyes staring at him all the time, or because he simply had no real liking for me, he clearly enjoyed playing and talking with Volodya more. But I was content, even so, and wished for and required nothing and was ready to sacrifice everything for him. Besides the passionate attraction he inspired, his presence awoke in me another, equally strong feeling – the fear of upsetting him or offending or displeasing him in some way, perhaps because his face had a haughty expression, or because in my contempt for my own looks I had too high a regard for the advantages of beauty in others, or, most likely, because my feeling for him contained as much fear in it as it did adoration – a sure sign of love. The first time Seryozha spoke to me, I was so abashed by the sheer unexpected happiness of it that I turned pale and then red and couldn’t answer anything. He had the bad habit when absorbed in thought of focusing his gaze on a single point and blinking and twitching his nose and eyebrows. Everyone was of the opinion that the habit spoiled his looks, but I found it so appealing that I involuntarily started to do the same thing myself, and a few days after I had made his acquaintance, Grandmother asked me if my eyes didn’t hurt, since I was blinking like an eagle owl. No words of affection ever passed between us, but he sensed his power over me and made unconscious but tyrannical use of it in our relations, while I, however much I wanted to tell him everything that was in my heart, was too afraid of him for such candour. I pretended not to care and submitted uncomplainingly. Sometimes his influence was an intolerable burden for me, but freeing myself of it was beyond my power.
It’s sad for me to recall that fresh, beautiful feeling of unselfish and boundless love that died without ever expressing itself or finding a sympathetic response.
Strange how as a child I tried to be like a grown-up, but that ever since I stopped being a child, I’ve often wanted to be childlike. How many times did the desire not to be like a little boy in my relations with Seryozha check the feeling that was ready to express itself and make me dissemble instead? Not only did I dare not kiss him, a thing that I sometimes very much wanted to do while taking his hand in mine and telling him how happy I was to see him, but I didn’t even dare to use his diminutive ‘Seryozha’, invariably calling him ‘Sergey’ instead, as we were all accustomed to doing. Every expression of sensitivity was taken as proof of childishness and of the fact that whoever allowed it in himself was still a ‘little boy’. Not yet experienced through the bitter trials that lead adults to caution and reserve in their relationships, we deprived ourselves of the pure pleasures of tender childhood attachment, merely from the strange desire to be like ‘grown-ups’.
I went down to meet the Ivins
while they were still in the footmen’s room, greeted them, and then ran headlong to Grandmother to tell her they had come, as if the news would be sure to fill her with joy. And then, never taking my eyes off Seryozha, I followed him into the drawing room, watching all his movements. When Grandmother said that he had grown a lot and fixed her penetrating gaze on him, I experienced the same mixture of hope and fear that an artist must feel waiting for a respected judge’s verdict on his work.
With Grandmother’s consent, the Ivins’ young tutor, Herr Frost, led us down to the front garden, where he took his seat on a green bench, picturesquely crossed his legs after placing his stick with its bronze knob between them, and lit a cigar with the look of someone quite content with his actions.
Herr Frost was a German, but a German of a completely different cut than our kind Karl Ivanych. First, he spoke Russian correctly and French with a bad accent, and generally enjoyed the reputation, especially among the ladies, of being very learned; second, he had a red moustache and wore lustrous light-blue trousers with foot straps and a large ruby pin in a black satin scarf whose ends had been tucked under his braces; and third, he was young and had a handsome, self-satisfied air and exceptionally muscular legs. It was clear that he especially prized the last advantage, regarding its effect on persons of the female sex as irresistible, and probably for that reason would try to put his legs in the most conspicuous position, and whether standing or sitting always flexed his calves. He was the type of young Russian-German who wants to be a rake and a gallant.
The front garden was great fun. Our game of robbers had never gone better, although one incident did come close to spoiling it all. Seryozha was the robber, and as he was running after the travellers, he stumbled and struck his knee against a tree so hard that I thought he had certainly smashed it. Although I was the gendarme and supposed to arrest him, I went over and asked with concern if he was all right. That made him angry, and he clenched his fists and stamped his foot, and in a voice that clearly showed that he had hurt himself very painfully, he started to yell,‘Well, what’s this, then? If you’re going to do that, there can’t be any game! Well, why don’t you arrest me?’ he repeated several times with sidelong glances at Volodya and the eldest Ivin, who, representing travellers, were galloping along the path, and then with a yelp and a loud laugh he ran after them.
I can’t convey how stunned and captivated I was by that heroic action. Despite the terrific pain, he not only didn’t cry out, but didn’t even show he was hurt or forget the game for a moment.
Soon after we had been joined by Ilenka Grap and gone upstairs before dinner, Seryozha had a chance to astonish and captivate me even more with his remarkable fortitude and firmness of character.
Ilenka Grap was the son of an impoverished foreigner, who at one time had lived in my grandfather’s house and somehow been in his debt, and who now considered it his binding duty to send his son to us for regular visits. If he supposed that acquaintance with us would bring honour or pleasure to his son, he was badly mistaken, for we were not merely unfriendly to Ilenka, but paid attention to him only when we wanted to laugh at him. Ilenka Grap was a boy of about thirteen, tall, thin and pale with a bird-like little face and a diffident, good-natured expression. He was very badly dressed, but on the other hand he was always so abundantly pomaded that we swore that on a sunny day the pomade would melt on his head and run down inside his jacket collar. When I recall him now I realize that he was a very obliging, quiet and kind boy. At the time, however, he seemed to me to be the sort of contemptible creature who deserved neither pity nor even thought.
After the game of robbers was over and we had gone upstairs, we started to ‘romp’ and show off various gymnastic tricks to each other. Ilenka watched us with a smile of timid amazement, and when it was suggested that he try them too, he declined, saying he wasn’t strong enough. Seryozha was remarkably fine. He took off his jacket and with a glowing face and gleaming eyes and constant guffaws kept coming up with new antics: he leapt over three chairs placed end to end, executed a cartwheel the length of the room and stood on his head on Tatishchev’s lexicons,48 stacked in the middle of it like a pedestal, all the while doing such hilarious things with his legs that it was impossible not to laugh. After that last trick, he fell to thinking, blinked his eyes, and then suddenly went over to Ilenka with a completely serious face. ‘Try it, it’s not so hard.’ Grap, realizing that everyone was looking at him, blushed and then in a barely audible voice assured us there was no way he would be able to do it.
‘Really, now, why doesn’t he want to show us anything? What a little girl he is. He definitely must stand on his head!’
And Seryozha took him by the arm.
‘Definitely, definitely on his head!’ we all started to yell, and surrounding Ilenka, who had turned white and was clearly frightened, we grabbed him by his arms and dragged him over to the lexicons.
‘Let me go, I’ll do it myself! You’ll tear my jacket!’ the unfortunate victim cried. But those cries of despair only egged us on, and when his green jacket came apart at the seams, we all burst into laughter.
Volodya and the oldest Ivin bent Ilenka’s head down and positioned it on the lexicons, while Seryozha and I grabbed the poor boy by his skinny legs, which he had been kicking in various directions, rolled his trousers up to his knees, and then with a loud laugh jerked his legs up. The youngest Ivin kept his torso balanced.
It happened after our noisy laughter that we all suddenly fell silent, and it became so still in the room that the only sound was the unfortunate Grap’s laboured breathing. I wasn’t entirely convinced at that moment that it was all so merry and amusing.
‘Well, you’re a brave fellow now,’ Seryozha said, slapping him on the back.
Ilenka said nothing and, trying to break free, struck out with his feet in different directions, striking Seryozha in the eye so hard with his heel in one of those desperate movements that Seryozha immediately let go of his leg, grabbed his eye, which was watering, and pushed Ilenka with all his might. No longer held by us, Ilenka fell to the floor like some lifeless thing, and because of his tears could only say, ‘Why are you tormenting me?’
The pitiful figure of poor Ilenka with his tear-stained face and tousled hair and his rolled-up trousers exposing his unpolished boot tops took us aback. We said nothing and tried to smile.
Seryozha was the first to recover.
‘What a sniveller! What a ninny!’ he said, prodding him with his foot. ‘Can’t take a joke? Enough of that, get up.’
‘I said you were a worthless brat,’ Ilenka angrily retorted, turning away, and starting to sob.
‘A-ha! He kicks people with his heels and then calls them names!’ Seryozha shouted, picking up one of the lexicons and brandishing it at the unfortunate Ilenka, who didn’t even try to defend himself, but merely covered his head with his hands.
‘Take that! And that! Leave him be, if he doesn’t understand jokes. Let’s go downstairs,’ Seryozha said, laughing unnaturally.
I gazed in sympathy at poor Ilenka, who was lying on the floor and sobbing so hard with his face in the lexicons that it seemed just a little more, and he would perish from the convulsions racking his body.
‘Sergey!’ I said to him. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘That’s a good one! I didn’t start crying, I hope, when I smashed my knee today almost to the bone.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ I thought. ‘Ilenka’s nothing but a crybaby, whereas Seryozha’s a brave fellow, a really brave fellow!’
It didn’t occur to me then that poor Ilenka was probably crying not so much from physical pain as from the thought that five boys, whom he perhaps liked, had all agreed for no reason at all to hate and torment him.
I’m simply unable to explain to myself the cruelty of my own actions. Why didn’t I go over and defend and comfort him? Where had the compassion gone that had once made me sob violently at the sight of a
jackdaw chick thrown from its nest, or an unwanted puppy about to be tossed over the fence, or a chicken being carried off by the kitchen boy for soup?
Had that fine feeling really been stifled in me by my affection for Seryozha and my desire to seem to him to be the same sort of brave fellow he was? How unenviable then were that affection and the desire to seem brave! They produced the only dark spots on the pages of my childhood memories.
TWENTY
Company Arrives
Judging by the particular bustle in the pantry, by the bright illumination imparting a kind of festive new look to the already long-familiar things of the drawing room and salon, and especially by the fact that Prince Ivan Ivanych had certainly not sent his musicians for nothing, a great deal of company was expected that evening.
I ran over to the window at the sound of every passing carriage, cupped my hands by my temples against the glass, and looked out at the street with impatient curiosity. Emerging little by little from the darkness that at first covered everything were the long-familiar shop and lantern across the street, the big house next to it with its two downstairs windows lit, and, on the street, a hack with two passengers or else an empty barouche returning home at an amble. But then a coach drove up to our front steps and, certain it was the Ivins, who had promised to come early, I ran downstairs to greet them in the entry room. But instead of the Ivins, two persons of the female sex appeared from behind the liveried arm holding the door: one big and wearing a blue pelerine with a sable collar, the other small and completely wrapped in a green shawl from under which only her little feet in fur boots could be seen. Paying no attention at all to my presence in the entry room, even though I had considered it my duty at the appearance of the two to bow to them, the small one silently went over to the big one and stood in front of her. The big one unwound the kerchief that completely covered the small one’s head, unbuttoned her pelerine, and then when the liveried footman had taken those things into his care and removed her fur boots, from the wrapped-up person emerged a wonderful twelve-year-old girl in a short open-neck muslin dress, white pantalettes and tiny black slippers. She wore a black satin ribbon around her little white neck and her head was completely covered with dark-chestnut curls that went so well with her beautiful little face in front and her bare little shoulders behind, that no one, not even Karl Ivanych himself, could have convinced me that they looked that way because they had been set with a hot curling iron and wrapped since morning with strips of the Moscow News. It seemed to me that she had been born with that head of curls.