by Leo Tolstoy
The discoveries made almost inadvertently by me in Papa’s portfolio thus left no clear idea in me at all, other than a vague sense that I had behaved badly. I felt uneasy and ashamed.
Impelled by that feeling, I wanted to close the portfolio as quickly as possible, but it was evidently my fate that unforgettable day to experience every possible calamity. After inserting the little key in the lock, I turned it the wrong way, and thinking that the lock was closed, I removed the key, whereupon – to my horror! – only the top part was left in my hand. I tried in vain to unite it with the part remaining inside the lock and by some magic to extract it. In the end I was forced to accept the terrifying idea that I had committed a new crime that would certainly be discovered that very day as soon as Papa returned to his study.
Mimi’s complaint, the poor mark, and the little key! Nothing worse could have happened to me. Grandmother for Mimi’s complaint, St-Jérôme for the poor mark, and Papa for the little key – it would all come crashing down on me no later than that evening!
‘What will happen to me?! O-o-h, what have I done?!’ I said out loud as I paced back and forth on the soft rug in the study. ‘Oh well,’ I said to myself as I got the sweets and cigars, ‘what cannot be avoided must be endured …’ And I ran back to the house.
That fatalistic maxim, which I learned from Nikolay as a small child, has had a beneficial and temporarily calming effect on me in all the difficult moments of my life. I returned to the salon in a slightly irritated and unnatural but extraordinarily mirthful state of mind.
THIRTEEN
The Deceiver
After dinner came petits jeux,22 in which I took a very active part. While playing cat and mouse, I clumsily ran into the Kornakovs’ governess, who had joined the game, and accidentally stepped on her dress and tore it. Noticing that all the girls, but especially Sonyechka, took great pleasure in seeing the governess go off with a distressed look to the maids’ room to mend her dress, I decided to give them the pleasure again. In keeping with that gracious purpose, as soon as the governess came back, I galloped around and around her until I found an opportune moment to catch my heel on her skirt and tear it again. Sonyechka and the princesses could barely hold back their laughter, which greatly flattered my pride, but St-Jérôme, no doubt having witnessed my antics, came over to me and said with a scowl (which I couldn’t bear) that my high spirits seemed to have led to no good, and that if I didn’t calm down he would make me regret it, even if it was a special occasion.
But I was in the irritated state of someone who has lost more than he can afford and is afraid to tally up, and so he keeps on playing one desperate card after another, no longer in hope of recouping his losses but simply to avoid thinking about them. I walked away from St-Jérôme with an insolent smirk.
After cat and mouse, someone started a game that I believe we called Lange Nase.23 It involved placing two rows of chairs across from each other with the ladies and cavaliers divided into two groups, and each group choosing from the other in turn.
The youngest princess chose the younger Ivin every time, Katenka chose either Volodya or Ilenka, while Sonyechka chose Seryozha every time and, to my great astonishment, wasn’t in the least embarrassed when he went over and sat down directly across from her. She laughed her sweet ringing laugh and motioned with her head that he had guessed correctly. But no one chose me. To the great mortification of my pride, I understood that I was superfluous, the one left over – that each time they would have to say, ‘Who’s left? Oh, Nikolenka. Well, you take him, then.’ Therefore, whenever it was my turn to guess, I would go directly to my sister or to one of the homely young princesses and, unfortunately, I was never wrong. Sonyechka, I think, was so preoccupied with Seryozha Ivin that I didn’t exist for her at all. I don’t know on what grounds I mentally called her a ‘deceiver’, since she had never promised to choose me instead of Seryozha, but I was firmly convinced that she had acted in the vilest way towards me.
After the game I noticed that the ‘deceiver’, whom I despised but couldn’t stop looking at, had gone off into a corner with Katenka and Seryozha, where they were talking among themselves. Creeping up behind the piano to find out their secrets, I saw the following: Katenka was holding up two ends of a batiste handkerchief as a screen to hide Seryozha and Sonyechka’s heads. ‘No, you lost, and now you have to pay up!’ Seryozha was saying. Her arms hanging down, Sonyechka stood before him like a guilty person and said with a blush, ‘I didn’t lose. Isn’t that right, mademoiselle Catherine?’ ‘I love the truth,’ Katenka answered. ‘You did lose the bet, ma chère.’
Hardly had Katenka managed to say those words than Seryozha bent down and kissed Sonyechka. He kissed her right on her rosy lips. And Sonyechka laughed as if it was nothing at all, as if it was lots of fun. Awful!!! ‘O, treacherous deceiver!’
FOURTEEN
A Temporary Derangement
I suddenly felt scorn for the entire female sex, and especially for Sonyechka. I persuaded myself that those games weren’t any fun at all, that they were only good for ‘silly girls’, and I felt an extraordinary urge to make a row and play a trick so bold that it would astonish everyone. An opportunity wasn’t long in coming.
St-Jérôme, after talking to Mimi about something, left the room, and the sound of his footsteps was heard first on the stairs and then overhead in the direction of the classroom. It occurred to me that Mimi had told him where she had seen me during the lesson, and that he had gone to look at the record book. At the time, I attributed to St-Jérôme no other purpose in life than to punish me. I’ve read somewhere that children from twelve to fourteen, that is, those at the transitional age of boyhood, are particularly susceptible to arson and even murder. Recalling my own boyhood, and especially the state of mind I was in on that unhappy day, I see very clearly how the most terrible crime might be committed not from a desire to cause harm or for any other reason, but ‘just so’, out of curiosity or an unconscious need for action. There are times when the future presents itself to a person in such a dismal light that he’s afraid to let his mental gaze dwell on it, and completely suspends the operation of his mind, convincing himself that there won’t be any future and that there hasn’t been any past. At such times, when thought no longer weighs every determination of the will in advance, and the only vital impulses are bodily instincts, it’s understandable how a child might, from inexperience, be especially vulnerable to such a state, and without the least hesitation or fear, but with a little smile of curiosity, first set and then fan a fire under his own house in which his brothers, father and mother, all of whom he dearly loves, are fast asleep. Under the sway of that same temporary absence of thought – of distraction, almost – a peasant boy of seventeen, while examining the blade of a just sharpened axe next to a bench on which his old father is lying face-down asleep, might all of a sudden swing the axe, and then with dull curiosity watch the blood from the severed neck pool beneath the bench. And under the sway of that same instinctive curiosity and absence of thought, a person might take a kind of pleasure in stopping at the very edge of a cliff and thinking, ‘What if I jump?’ Or in putting a loaded pistol to his forehead and thinking, ‘What if I pull the trigger?’ Or in looking at some very important personage before whom a whole society feels servile respect and wondering, ‘What if I go over to him, grab him by the nose, and say, “What about this, my dear fellow?”’
It was under the sway of that same inner turmoil and absence of reflection that when St-Jérôme came back downstairs and said that, since I had behaved and studied so badly, I had no business being there that day and would have to go up to my room at once, I stuck out my tongue at him and announced that I wasn’t going anywhere.
St-Jérôme was at first speechless with astonishment and fury.
‘C’est bien,’24 he said, coming after me. ‘I’ve promised to punish you several times before and it’s always been your grandmother’s wish to spare you, but no
w I see that the only thing that will make you obey is a good birching, and you’ve certainly earned one today.’
He said it so loudly that everyone heard him. The blood rushed into my heart with terrific force: I felt it pound, and the colour drain from my face, and my lips quiver involuntarily. I must have been an awful sight at that moment, for St-Jérôme, avoiding my gaze, quickly came over to me and seized me by the arm. But as soon as I felt his hand, I was so overcome with rage that I tore my arm away and hit him with all my child’s strength.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Volodya said, coming over to me after watching my behaviour in astonishment and horror.
‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed at him through my tears. ‘No one cares anything about me or understands how unhappy I am! You’re all vile and disgusting!’ I added in a sort of frenzy, addressing the entire company.
But at that instant, St-Jérôme came after me again with a pale, determined face, and before I could defend myself had seized both my arms in a strong, vice-like grip and started to drag me away. I was delirious with rage, and the only thing I remember is desperately lashing out with my head and knees while I still had the strength to do so, banging my nose against someone’s thighs several times, getting someone’s coat in my mouth, and being aware of the proximity on every side of someone’s legs and the smell of dust and the violette that St-Jérôme used as a scent.
Five minutes later the storage-closet door closed behind me.
‘Vasile!’ he said in a hideous, exultant voice. ‘Bring me a birch rod!’
FIFTEEN
Daydreams
Could I really have thought then that I would survive the disasters that had befallen me, or that a time would come when I could calmly remember them?
As I recalled what I had done, I couldn’t imagine what would happen to me, although I did have a vague sense that I was irretrievably lost.
At first, complete silence reigned below and around me, or so it seemed to me in my overwrought state, but then I gradually began to make out different sounds. Vasily came upstairs, and after tossing something like a broom onto the windowsill, stretched out on a bin with a yawn. Down below the loud voice of Avgust Antonych25 could be heard, no doubt talking about me, and then children’s voices, and then laughter and running around, and then, after a few more minutes, the whole house returned to its previous movement, as if no one knew or cared that I was sitting in the dark storage closet.
I didn’t cry, although something lay heavily on my heart like a stone. Thoughts and images passed through my distraught imagination with increasing speed, but the memory of what had happened kept interrupting their fantastical train, and I would find myself back in a closed labyrinth of despair, fear, and ignorance about what lay ahead.
Then it occurred to me there must be some unknown reason for the general dislike and even loathing of me. (I was firmly convinced at the time that everyone, from Grandmother to Filipp the coachman, hated me and and took pleasure in my sufferings.) ‘It must be that I’m not my mother and father’s son, nor Volodya’s brother, but a wretched orphan, a foundling taken in for charity’s sake,’ I said to myself, and that ridiculous idea not only provided a kind of melancholy solace, but even seemed quite plausible. It was comforting to think that I was unhappy not through any fault of my own, but because it had been my fate from birth – that my lot was like that of the unhappy Karl Ivanych.
‘But why keep it a secret any more, when I myself have already guessed?’ I said to myself. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go to Papa and say to him, “Papa, there’s no reason for you to hide the secret of my birth from me. I know it.” He’ll say, “What’s to be done, my friend? Sooner or later, you were going to find out. You’re not my son, but adopted, and if you’re worthy of my love, I’ll never abandon you.” And I’ll say to him, “Papa, even though I’ve no right to call you that, and say it now for the last time, I’ve always loved you and will love you, and never will I forget that you are my benefactor, but I cannot remain in your home any longer. No one cares about me here, and St-Jérôme has sworn to destroy me. Either he or I must leave your home, for I cannot answer for my actions; my hatred of that man is so great that I could do anything. I’ll kill him.” That’s what I’ll say: “Papa, I’ll kill him!” Papa will start to plead with me, but I’ll wave my hand and say, “No, my friend, my benefactor, we cannot live together, so let me go,” and I’ll embrace him and say, in French for some reason, “Oh mon père, oh mon bienfaiteur, donne-moi pour la dernière fois ta bénédiction et que la volonté de dieu soit faite!”’26 And sitting on a trunk there in the dark storage closet, I sob uncontrollably at the thought. But then I suddenly remember the shameful punishment awaiting me, and reality presents itself in its true light and my daydreams are instantly dispelled.
Then I imagine myself at liberty and outside our home. I’ve joined the hussars and gone off to war. I’m beset by foes on every side. I swing my sabre and kill one, and then with a second blow, another, and then a third. Finally, faint from my wounds and exhaustion, I fall to the ground and cry, ‘Victory!’ A general rides up and asks, ‘Where is he, our saviour?’ They point to me and he embraces me with tears in his eyes and cries, ‘Victory!’ I recover from my wounds, and with my arm in a black sling I’m walking along Tverskoy Boulevard. I’m a general! And then the sovereign drives by and asks who that wounded young man is. They tell him it’s the famous hero, Nikolay. The sovereign comes to me and says, ‘You have my gratitude. I’ll grant whatever you ask of me.’ I bow respectfully, and leaning on my sabre I say, ‘I’m happy, great sovereign, that I could shed my blood for my fatherland, and I would die for it, but if you will be so kind as to grant a request, then I do have one: permit me to destroy my enemy, the foreigner St-Jérôme. I want to destroy my enemy, St-Jérôme.’ I stand menacingly before St-Jérôme and say to him, ‘You’re the cause of my unhappiness. À genoux!’27 But then it suddenly occurs to me that the real St-Jérôme might at any moment walk in with a birch rod, and I no longer see myself as a general saving his fatherland, but once again as a miserable wretch.
And then I begin to think about God and brazenly ask Him why He’s punishing me. ‘I have, I think, never forgotten to pray morning and night, so why do I suffer?’ I can positively say that the first steps towards the religious doubts that troubled me in boyhood were taken then, not because my unhappiness provoked grumbling and disbelief, but because the idea of the injustice of Providence that came to me in that time of complete mental disorder and day-long isolation quickly began to germinate and put down roots, like a bad seed fallen on soft earth after rain. I imagined then that I would certainly die, and vividly pictured St-Jérôme’s surprise on finding a lifeless body in the storage closet instead of me. Recalling Natalya Savishna’s stories that the soul of the deceased remains in its home for forty days, I mentally hover as an invisible spirit in all the rooms of Grandmother’s house after my death and listen to Lyubochka’s sincere tears, Grandmother’s sorrow and Papa’s conversation with Avgust Antonych. ‘He was a fine lad,’ Papa will say with tears in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ St-Jérôme will reply, ‘but a tremendous scamp.’ ‘You ought to respect the dead,’ Papa will tell him. ‘You were the cause of his death, you filled him with fear and he could not tolerate the humiliation you were preparing for him … Depart, scoundrel!’
And St-Jérôme will fall on his knees, and weep and beg forgiveness. After forty days my soul then flies to heaven. There I see something astonishingly beautiful, white, translucent and tall, and sense it is my mother. That white something surrounds and caresses me, but I feel uneasy and barely recognize her. ‘If it really is you,’ I say, ‘show yourself to me more clearly, so I can embrace you.’ And her voice replies, ‘We’re all like this here and I can’t embrace you any better. Do you really not like it?’ ‘No, it’s very good, but you can’t tickle me and I can’t kiss your hands.’ ‘That isn’t necessary; it’s beautiful here, even so,’ she says, and I
sense that it really is beautiful, and together we fly higher and higher. Then I awake and find myself again on a trunk in the dark storage closet, my cheeks wet with tears as I vacantly repeat the words,‘we all fly higher and higher’. For a long time I make a great effort to understand my position, but the only thing that presents itself to my mental gaze is a terrifyingly gloomy, impenetrable expanse. I try to return to the happy, comforting daydreams that had been interrupted by the consciousness of reality, but to my surprise, as soon as I enter the track of my earlier musings, I find that their continuation is impossible and, what is more surprising, that they no longer give me any satisfaction at all.
SIXTEEN
It Will All Work Out in the End
I spent the night in the storage closet, and no one came to see me. The next day, on Sunday, that is, I was taken to the little room next to the classroom and locked in again. I was beginning to hope that my punishment would be limited to confinement, and thanks to a sweet, fortifying sleep, the bright sunshine playing in the hoarfrost on the windows, and the usual daytime noise in the streets, my thoughts were growing calmer. But the isolation was still very hard: I wanted to move around and tell someone about all the things that had accumulated in my heart, but there wasn’t any living creature near. The situation was made all the more unpleasant by the fact that, as loathsome to me as it was, I still couldn’t help hearing St-Jérôme calmly whistling merry tunes to himself as he walked around his room. I was fully convinced that he didn’t really want to whistle, but was only doing it to torment me.
At two o’clock St-Jérôme and Volodya went downstairs and Nikolay brought me dinner, and after I talked to him about what I had done and what might lie in store for me, he said, ‘Don’t fret, sir, it will all work out in the end.’