Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

56 Add: All these were occupations that were not directly necessary, but she always behaved as if her life and that of the children depended on the pies with the soup not being burnt, on the curtain being hung up, the dress finished, the lesson learnt, and some medicine or other taken. It was clear to me that all this was for her mainly a means of forgetting herself, an intoxication, such as was for me the intoxication of my service, shooting, or cards. It is true that besides these I also had intoxication in its direct meaning – drunkenness: with tobacco, of which I smoked an enormous quantity, and alcohol with which I did not actually get drunk, but of which I took some vodka before meals and a couple of tumblers of wine during meals, so that a continual fog screened from us the discord of our life.

  57 Add: All this mental illness of ours occurred simply because we lived immorally. We suffered from our immoral life, and to smother our suffering we committed various abnormal acts – just what those doctors call “indications of mental disease” – hysterics. The cure for these illnesses does not lie with Charcot, nor with them. It cannot be cured by any suggestions or bromides, but it is necessary to recognize what the pain comes from. It is like sitting down on a nail: if you notice the nail, or see what is wrong in your life and cease to do it, the pain will cease and there will be nothing to smother. The wrongness of our life caused the pain, caused my torments of jealousy and my need of going out shooting, of cards, and above all of wine and tobacco to keep myself in a constant state of intoxication. From that wrongness of life arose also her passionate relation to all her occupations, her instability of mood – now gloomy, now terribly gay, – and her volubility – it all came from the constant need of diverting her attention from herself and her life. It was a constant intoxication with this or that work, which always had to be done in a hurry.

  58 Add: Unhappy people can get on better in town.

  59 Instead of the following line, read: Divorce, well then divorce!” My sister-in-law would not admit that idea.

  60 Read: but I have bound myself by my own words.

  61 Read: disliked him and understood that he was a dirty adulterer, and I began to be jealous of him even before he saw my wife.

  62 Read: why, in the important events of our life, in those which decide a man’s fate – as mine was decided then – why, there is no distinction between past and future.

  63 Instead of the following three lines, read: I had a consciousness of some terrible calamity connected with that man. But for all that I could not help being affable with him.

  64 Read: He played excellently, with a strong and tender tone; difficulties did not exist for him. As soon as he began to play his face altered, became serious and far more sympathetic; he was of course a much better player than my wife and helped her simply and naturally.

  65 Read: … simple and pleasant. During the whole evening I seemed not only to the others, but to myself, to be solely interested in the music, while in reality I was unceasingly tormented by jealousy. From the first moment that his eyes met my wife’s I saw that he looked at her as at a woman who was not unpleasant and with whom on occasion it would not be unpleasant to have a liaison. Had I been pure I should not have thought about what he might think of her, but like most men I also thought about women, and therefore understood him and was tormented by it.

  66 Read: his restrained voice and her refusal. She seemed to say “but no”, and something more. It was as if someone was intentionally smothering the words. My God, what then arose in me! What I imagined!

  67 Add: She will disgrace me! I will go away – but I can’t.

  68 Add: and advised me to see it out.

  69 Add: A husband ought not to think so, and still less should he shove his nose in and hinder things.

  70 Read: graceful, indolent, subtle figure,

  71 Add: or something of that kind about my character.

  72 Instead of the next six lines, read: and I turned her round and gave her a violent push. “What is the matter with you? Recollect yourself!” said she.

  73 Add: rolling my eyes.

  74 Read: I restrained myself and

  75 Add: We sent for the doctor, and I attended her all night.

  76 Add: … not so much on account of my wife’s assurances, as on account of the tormenting suffering I had experienced from my jealousy.

  77 Add: He went to fetch his violin. My wife went to the piano and began selecting the music.

  78 Add: and long remained silent.

  79 Add: In this new condition jealousy had no place.

  80 Add: That music drew me into some world in which jealousy no longer had place. Jealousy and the feeling that evoked it seemed trifles not worth considering.

  81 Instead of the next eleven lines, read: I hardly felt jealous all the evening. I had to go to the Meetings in two days’ time, and he, when leaving, collected all his music and inquired when I should be back, as he wished to say goodbye before his own departure.… It appeared that I should hardly be back before he left Moscow, so we bade one another a definite good-bye.

  82 Add: We spoke in very general terms of the impressions produced by the music, but we were nearer and more friendly to one another that evening, in a way we had seldom been of late.

  83 Read: while it was still dark,

  84 Add: and as if I should drive on like that to the end of my life and of the world,

  85 Add: which was quite a new one,

  86 Add: one more cynical than another,

  87 Add: forgetting that there was no ground for this.

  88 Instead of the next line, read: I cried out, and began to groan.

  89 Add: And the same thing began again within me. I suffered as I never had suffered before. I did not know what to do with myself, and the thought occurred to me – and it pleased me very much – of getting out onto the line, lying down under the train, and finishing everything. The one thing that hindered my doing this was my self-pity, which immediately evoked hatred of her and of him. Of him not so much. Regarding him I had a strange feeling of my own humiliation and of his victory, but of her I felt terrible hatred. It will not do to finish myself off and to leave her, it is necessary that she should suffer.

  90 Instead of the following words, read: and read the shop sign-boards,

  91 Instead of the next sentence, read: I cannot at all explain to myself now why I was in such a hurry.

  92 Read: there arose in me an animal craving for physical, agile, cunning, and decisive action.

  93 Read: and of the tormenting pleasure of punishing, and executing.

  94 In the lithograph the chapter ends with the words: I do not know how I went, with what steps, whether I ran or only walked, through which rooms I went on my way to the drawing-room, how I opened the door or how I entered the room – I remember nothing of all that.

  95 In the lithograph this first sentence is omitted.

  96 Add: as from a spring.

  97 Add: – a sister.

  98 Read: ‘ “Yes, if you had not killed me!” she suddenly exclaimed, and her eyes glittered feverishly.

  99 The sentence ends: the children, not even Lisa who rushed up to her.

  100 In the lithograph the conclusion is different, the last paragraph being as follows: Yes, that is what I have done, and what I have gone through. Yes, a man should understand that the real meaning of the words in the Gospel – Matthew v. 28 – where it says that everyone that looketh on a woman to lust after her commits adultery, relates to woman, his fellow human being – not merely to casual women or strangers, but above all to his own wife.

  * The Zémskoe Sobránie, work in the administration of which was paid for.

  THE DEVIL

  But I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

  And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.

  And if
thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell. Matthew v. 28, 29, 30.

  I

  A BRILLIANT career lay before Eugéne Irténev. He had everything necessary to attain it: an admirable education at home, high honours when he graduated in law at Petersburg University, and connexions in the highest society through his recently deceased father; he had also already begun service in one of the Ministries under the protection of the Minister. Moreover he had a fortune; even a large one, though insecure. His father had lived abroad and in Petersburg, allowing his sons, Eugéne and Andrew (who was older than Eugéne and in the Horse Guards), six thousand rubles a year each, while he himself and his wife spent a great deal. He only used to visit his estate for a couple of months in summer and did not concern himself with its direction, entrusting it all to an unscrupulous manager who also failed to attend to it, but in whom he had complete confidence.

  After the father’s death, when the brothers began to divide the property, so many debts were discovered that their lawyer even advised them to refuse the inheritance and retain only an estate left them by their grandmother, which was valued at a hundred thousand rubles. But a neighbouring landed proprietor who had done business with old Irténev, that is to say, who had promissory notes from him and had come to Petersburg on that account, said that in spite of the debts they could straighten out affairs so as to retain a large fortune (it would only be necessary to sell the forest and some outlying land, retaining the rich Semënov estate with four thousand desyatins of black earth, the sugar factory, and two hundred desyatins of water-meadows) if one devoted oneself to the management of the estate, settled there, and farmed it wisely and economically.

  And so, having visited the estate in spring (his father had died in Lent), Eugéne looked into everything, resolved to retire from the Civil Service, settle in the country with his mother, and undertake the management with the object of preserving the main estate. He arranged with his brother, with whom he was very friendly, that he would pay him either four thousand rubles a year, or a lump sum of eighty thousand, for which Andrew would hand over to him his share of the inheritance.

  So he arranged matters and, having settled down with his mother in the big house, began managing the estate eagerly, yet cautiously.

  It is generally supposed that conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.

  Thus it was with Eugéne. Having settled in the village, his aim and ideal was to restore the form of life that had existed, not in his father’s time – his father had been a bad manager – but in his grandfather’s. And now he tried to resurrect the general spirit of his grandfather’s life – in the house, the garden, and in the estate management – of course with changes suited to the times – everything on a large scale – good order, method, and everybody satisfied. But to do this entailed much work. It was necessary to meet the demands of the creditors and the banks, and for that purpose to sell some land and arrange renewals of credit. It was also necessary to get money to carry on (partly by farming out land, and partly by hiring labour) the immense operations on the Semënov estate, with its four hundred desyatins of ploughland and its sugar factory, and to deal with the garden so that it should not seem to be neglected or in decay.

  There was much work to do, but Eugéne had plenty of strength – physical and mental. He was twenty-six, of medium height, strongly built, with muscles developed by gymnastics. He was full-blooded and his whole neck was very red, his teeth and lips were bright, and his hair soft and curly though not thick. His only physical defect was short-sightedness, which he had himself developed by using spectacles, so that he could not now do without a pince-nez, which had already formed a line on the bridge of his nose.

  Such he was physically. For his spiritual portrait it might be said that the better people knew him the better they liked him. His mother had always loved him more than anyone else, and now after her husband’s death she concentrated on him not only her whole affection but her whole life. Nor was it only his mother who so loved him. All his comrades at the high school and the university not merely liked him very much, but respected him. He had this effect on all who met him. It was impossible not to believe what he said, impossible to suspect any deception or falseness in one who had such an open, honest face and in particular such eyes.

  In general his personality helped him much in his affairs. A creditor who would have refused another trusted him. The clerk, the village Elder, or a peasant, who would have played a dirty trick and cheated someone else, forgot to deceive under the pleasant impression of intercourse with this kindly, agreeable, and above all candid man.

  It was the end of May. Eugéne had somehow managed in town to get the vacant land freed from the mortgage, so as to sell it to a merchant, and had borrowed money from that same merchant to replenish his stock, that is to say, to procure horses, bulls, and carts, and in particular to begin to build a necessary farm-house. The matter had been arranged. The timber was being carted, the carpenters were already at work, and manure for the estate was being brought on eighty carts, but everything still hung by a thread.

  II

  AMID these cares something came about which though unimportant tormented Eugéne at the time. As a young man he had lived as all healthy young men live, that is, he had had relations with women of various kinds. He was not a libertine but neither, as he himself said, was he a monk. He only turned to this, however, in so far as was necessary for physical health and to have his mind free, as he used to say. This had begun when he was sixteen and had gone on satisfactorily – in the sense that he had never given himself up to debauchery, never once been infatuated, and had never contracted a disease. At first he had had a seamstress in Petersburg, then she got spoilt and he made other arrangements, and that side of his affairs was so well secured that it did not trouble him.

  But now he was living in the country for the second month and did not at all know what he was to do. Compulsory self-restraint was beginning to have a bad effect on him.

  Must he really go to town for that purpose? And where to? How? That was the only thing that disturbed him; but as he was convinced that the thing was necessary and that he needed it, it really became a necessity, and he felt that he was not free and that his eyes involuntarily followed every young woman.

  He did not approve of having relations with a married woman or a maid in his own village. He knew by report that both his father and grandfather had been quite different in this matter from other landowners of that time. At home they had never had any entanglements with peasant-women, and he had decided that he would not do so either; but afterwards, feeling himself ever more and more under compulsion and imagining with horror what might happen to him in the neighbouring country town, and reflecting on the fact that the days of serfdom were now over, he decided that it might be done on the spot. Only it must be done so that no one should know of it, and not for the sake of debauchery but merely for health’s sake – as he said to himself. And when he had decided this he became still more restless. When talking to the village Elder, the peasants, or the carpenters, he involuntarily brought the conversation round to women, and when it turned to women he kept it on that theme. He noticed the women more and more.

  III

  TO settle the matter in his own mind was one thing but to carry it out was another. To approach a woman himself was impossible. Which one? Where? It must be done through someone else, but to whom should he speak about it?

  He happened to go into a watchman’s hut in the forest to get a drink of water. The watchman had been his father’s huntsman, and Eugéne Ivánich chatted with him, and the man began telling some strange tale
s of hunting sprees. It occurred to Eugéne Ivánich that it would be convenient to arrange matters in this hut, or in the wood, only he did not know how to manage it and whether old Daniel would undertake the arrangement. ‘Perhaps he will be horrified at such a proposal and I shall have disgraced myself, but perhaps he will agree to it quite simply.’ So he thought while listening to Daniel’s stories. Daniel was telling how once when they had been stopping at the hut of the sexton’s wife in an outlying field, he had brought a woman for Fëdor Zakhárich Pryánishnikov.

  ‘It will be all right,’ thought Eugéne.

  ‘Your father, may the kingdom of heaven be his, did not go in for nonsense of that kind.’

  ‘It won’t do,’ thought Eugéne. But to test the matter he said: ‘How was it you engaged in such bad things?’

  ‘But what was there bad in it? She was glad, and Fëdor Zakhárich was satisfied, very satisfied. I got a ruble. Why, what was he to do? He too is a lively limb apparently, and drinks wine.’

  ‘Yes, I may speak,’ thought Eugéne, and at once proceeded to do so.

  ‘And do you know, Daniel, I don’t know how to endure it,’ – he felt himself going scarlet.

  Daniel smiled.

  ‘I am not a monk – I have been accustomed to it.’

  He felt that what he was saying was stupid, but was glad to see that Daniel approved.

  ‘Why of course, you should have told me long ago. It can all be arranged,’ said he: ‘only tell me which one you want.’

  ‘Oh, it is really all the same to me. Of course not an ugly one, and she must be healthy.’

  ‘I understand!’ said Daniel briefly. He reflected.

  ‘Ah! There is a tasty morsel,’ he began. Again Eugéne went red. ‘A tasty morsel. See here, she was married last autumn.’ Daniel whispered, – ‘and he hasn’t been able to do anything. Think what that is worth to one who wants it!’

  Eugène even frowned with shame.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I don’t want that at all. I want, on the contrary’ (what could the contrary be?), ‘on the contrary I only want that she should be healthy and that there should be as little fuss as possible – a woman whose husband is away in the army or something of that kind.’