Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  The money Julius got from his father was very soon all spent. And just at that time it happened that he and a drunken companion became involved in a brawl and killed a man. The city prefect heard of this and would have had him arrested, but his father intervened and obtained his pardon. Julius now needed still more money for dissipation, and this time he borrowed it from a companion, promising to repay it. Moreover his mistress demanded a present: she had taken a fancy to a pearl necklace, and Julius knew that if he did not gratify her wish she would abandon him and attach herself to a rich man who had long been trying to entice her away.

  Julius went to his mother and told her that he must have some money, and that he would kill himself if he could not get what he needed. He placed the blame for his being in such a position not on himself but on his father. He said: ‘My father accustomed me to a life of luxury and then began to grudge me money. Had he given me at first and without reproaches what he gave me later, I should have arranged my life properly and should not have been in such difficulties, but as he never gave me enough I had to go to the money-lenders and they squeezed everything out of me, and I had nothing left on which to live the life natural to me as a rich young man, and was made to feel ashamed among my companions. But my father does not wish to understand anything of all this. He forgets that he was young once himself. He has brought me to this state, and now if he will not give me what I ask I shall kill myself.’

  The mother, who spoilt her son, went to his father, and Juvenal called his son and began to upbraid both him and his mother. Julius answered his father rudely and Juvenal struck him. Julius seized his father’s arm, at which Juvenal shouted to his slaves and bade them bind his son and lock him up.

  Julius was left alone, and he cursed his father and his own life.

  It seemed to him that the only way of escape from his present position was either by his own or his father’s death.

  Julius’s mother suffered even more than he did. She did not try to understand who was to blame for all this. She only pitied her adored son. She went again to her husband to implore him to forgive the youth, but he would not listen to her, and reproached her for having spoilt their son. She in turn reproached him, and it ended by Juvenal beating his wife. Disregarding this, however, she went to her son and persuaded him to beg his father’s pardon and yield to his wishes, in return for which she promised to take the money he needed from her husband by stealth, and give it him. Julius agreed, and then his mother again went to Juvenal and urged him to forgive his son. Juvenal scolded his wife and son for a long time, but at last decided that he would forgive Julius, on condition that he should abandon his dissolute life and marry the daughter of a rich merchant – a match Juvenal was very anxious to arrange.

  ‘He will get money from me and also have his wife’s dowry,’ said Juvenal, ‘and then let him settle down to a decent life. If he promises to obey my wishes, I will forgive him; but I will not give him anything at present, and the first time he transgresses I will hand him over to the prefect.’

  Julius submitted to his father’s conditions and was released. He promised to marry and to abandon his bad life, but he had no intention of doing so.

  Life at home now became a hell for him. His father did not speak to him and quarrelled with his mother on his account, and his mother wept.

  One day she called him into her apartments and secretly handed him a precious stone which she had taken from her husband’s room.

  ‘Go and sell it,’ she said, ‘not here but in another town, and then do what you have to do. I shall be able to conceal its loss for the present, and if it is discovered I will lay the blame on one of the slaves.’

  Julius’s heart was pierced by his mother’s words. He was horrified at what she had done, and without taking the precious stone he left the house.

  He did not himself know where he was going or with what aim. He walked on and on out of the town, feeling that he needed to be alone, and thinking over all that had happened to him and that awaited him. Going farther and farther away at last he reached the sacred grove of the goddess Diana. Coming to a secluded spot he began to think, and the first thought that occurred to him was to seek the goddess’s aid. But he no longer believed in the gods, and knew that he could not expect aid from them. And if not from them, then from whom?

  To think out his position for himself seemed to him too strange. All was darkness and confusion in his soul. But there was nothing else to be done. He had to listen to his conscience, and began to consider his life and his actions in the light of it. And both appeared to him bad, and above all stupid. Why had he tormented himself like this? Why had he ruined his young life in such a way? It had brought him little happiness and much sorrow and unhappiness. But chiefly he felt himself alone. Formerly he had had a mother whom he loved, a father, and friends. Now there was no one. Nobody loved him! He was a burden to them all. He had been a cause of suffering to all who knew him. For his mother he was the cause of discord with his father. For his father he was the dissipator of the wealth collected by a lifetime of labour. For his friends he was a dangerous and disagreeable rival. They must all desire his death.

  Passing his life in review he remembered Pamphilius and his last meeting with him, and how Pamphilius had invited him to go there, to the Christians. And it occurred to him not to return home, but to go straight to the Christians and remain with them.

  But could his position be so desperate? he wondered. Again he recalled all that had happened to him, and again he was horrified at the idea that nobody loved him and that he loved no one. His mother, father, and friends did not care for him and must wish for his death. But did he himself love anyone? His friends? He felt that he loved none of them: they were all his rivals and would be pitiless to him now that he was in distress. His father? He was seized with horror when he put himself that question. He looked into his heart and found that not only did he not love his father, he even hated him for the restraint and insult he had put upon him. He hated him, and more than that he saw clearly that his father’s death was necessary for his own happiness.

  ‘Yes,’ he said to himself. ‘If I knew that no one would see it or ever know of it, what should I do if I could immediately, at one stroke, deprive him of life and free myself?’

  And he answered his own question: ‘I should kill him!’ And he was horrified at that reply.

  ‘My mother? I am sorry for her but I do not love her: it is all the same to me what becomes of her. All I need is her help.… I am a beast, and a wretched, hunted one at that. I only differ from a beast in that I can by my own will quit this false and evil life. I can do what a beast cannot do – I can kill myself. I hate my father. There is no one I love … neither my mother nor my friends … unless, perhaps, Pamphilius alone?’

  And he again thought of him. He recalled their last meeting, their conversation, and Pamphilius’s words that, according to their teaching, Christ had said: ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Could that be true?

  He went on thinking, and remembering Pamphilius’s gentle, fearless, and happy face, he wished to believe what Pamphilius had said.

  ‘What indeed am I?’ he said to himself. ‘Who am I? A man seeking happiness. I sought it in my lusts and did not find it. And all who live as I did fail to find it. They are all evil and suffer. But there is a man who is always full of joy because he demands nothing. He says that there are many like him and that all men will be such if they follow their Master’s teaching. What if this be true? True or not it attracts me and I will go there.’

  So said Julius to himself, and he left the grove, having decided not to return home but to go to the village where the Christians lived.

  III

  JULIUS went along briskly and joyously, and the farther he went the more vividly did he imagine to himself the life of the Christians, recalling all that Pamphilius had said, and the happier he felt. The sun was already declining towards evening and he wished to rest
, when he came upon a man seated by the roadside having a meal. He was a man of middle age with an intelligent face, and was sitting there eating olives and a flat cake. On seeing Julius he smiled and said:

  ‘Greeting to you, young man! The way is still long. Sit down and rest.’

  Julius thanked him and sat down.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the stranger.

  ‘To the Christians,’ said Julius, and by degrees he recounted to the unknown his whole life and his decision.

  The stranger listened attentively and asked about some details without himself expressing an opinion, but when Julius had ended he packed the remaining food in his wallet, adjusted his dress, and said:

  ‘Young man, do not pursue your intention. You would be making a mistake. I know life; you do not. I know the Christians; you do not. Listen! I will review your life and your thoughts, and when you have heard them from me, you will take what decision seems to you wisest. You are young, rich, handsome, strong, and the passions boil in your veins. You wish to find a quiet refuge where they will not agitate you and you would not suffer from their consequences. And you think that you can find such a shelter among the Christians.

  ‘There is no such refuge, dear young man, because what troubles you does not dwell in Cilicia or in Rome but in yourself. In the quiet solitude of a village the same passions will torment you, only a hundred times more strongly. The deception of the Christians, or their delusion – for I do not wish to judge them – consists in not wishing to recognize human nature. Only an old man who has outlived all his passions could fully carry out their teaching. But a man in the vigour of life, or a youth like you who has not yet tested life and tried himself, cannot submit to their law, because it is based not on human nature but on idle speculations. If you go to them you will suffer from what makes you suffer now, only to a much greater extent. Now your passions lead you into wrong paths, but having once mistaken your road you can correct it. Now at any rate you have the satisfaction of desires fulfilled – that is life. But among the Christians, forcibly restraining your passions, you will err yet more and in a similar way, and besides that suffering you will have the incessant suffering of unsatisfied desires. Release the water from a dam and it will irrigate the earth and the meadows and supply drink for the animals, but confine it and it will burst its banks and flow away as mud. So it is with the passions. The teaching of the Christians (besides the belief in another life with which they console themselves and of which I will not speak) – their practical teaching is this: They do not approve of violence, do not recognize wars, or tribunals, or property, or the sciences and arts, or anything that makes life easy and pleasant.

  ‘That might be well enough if all men were such as they describe their Teacher as having been. But that is not and cannot be so. Men are evil and subject to passions. That play of passions and the conflicts caused by them are what keep men in the social condition in which they live. The barbarians know no restraint, and for the satisfaction of his desires one such man would destroy the whole world if all men submitted as these Christians do. If the gods implanted in men the sentiments of anger, revenge, and even of vindictiveness against the wicked, they did so because these sentiments are necessary for human life. The Christians teach that these feelings are bad, and that without them men would be happy, and there would be no murders, executions, and wars. That is true, but it is like supposing that people would be happy if they did not eat food. There would then indeed be no greed or hunger, or any of the calamities that result from them. But that supposition would not change human nature. And if some two or three dozen people believed in it, and did actually refrain from food and die of hunger, it would still not alter human nature. The same is true of man’s other passions: indignation, anger, revenge, even the love of women, of luxury, or of the pomp and grandeur characteristic of the gods and therefore unalterable characteristics of man too. Abolish man’s nutrition and man will be destroyed. And similarly abolish the passions natural to man and mankind will be unable to exist. It is the same with ownership, which the Christians are supposed to reject. Look around you: every vineyard, every enclosure, every house, every ass, has been produced by man under conditions of ownership. Abandon the rights of property and not one vineyard will be tilled or one animal raised and tended. The Christians say that they have no property, but they enjoy the fruits of it. They say that they have all things in common and that everything is brought together into a common pool. But what they bring together they have received from people who owned property. They merely deceive others, or at best deceive themselves. You say that they themselves work to support themselves, but what they get by work would not support them if they did not avail themselves of what men who recognize ownership have produced. Even if they could support themselves it would be a bare subsistence, and there would be no place among them for the sciences or arts. They do not even recognize the use of our sciences and arts. Nor can it be otherwise. Their whole teaching tends to reduce them to a primitive condition of savagery – to an animal existence.

  ‘They cannot serve humanity by our arts and sciences, and being ignorant of them they condemn them. Nor can they serve humanity in any of the ways which constitute man’s peculiar prerogative and ally him to the gods. They have neither temples nor statues nor theatres nor museums. They say they do not need these things. The easiest way to avoid being ashamed of one’s degradation is to scorn what is lofty, and that is what they do. They are atheists. They do not acknowledge the gods or their participation in human affairs. They believe only in the Father of their Teacher, whom they also call their Father, and the Teacher himself, who they think has revealed to them all the mysteries of life. Their teaching is a pitiful fraud! Consider just this. Our religion says: The world depends on the gods, the gods protect men, and in order to live well men must respect the gods, and must themselves search and think. In this way our life is guided on the one hand by the will of the gods, and on the other by the collective wisdom of mankind. We live, think, search, and thus advance towards the truth.

  ‘But these Christians have neither the gods, nor their own will, nor the wisdom of humanity. They have only a blind faith in their crucified Teacher and in all that he said to them. Now consider which is the more trustworthy guide – the will of the gods and the free activity of collective human wisdom, or the compulsory, blind belief in the words of one man?’

  Julius was struck by what the stranger said and particularly by his last words. Not only was his intention of going to the Christians shaken, but it now appeared to him strange that, under the influence of his misfortunes, he could ever have decided on such an insanity. But the question still remained of what he was to do now, and what exit to find from the difficult circumstances in which he was placed, and so, having explained his position, he asked the stranger’s advice.

  ‘It was just of that matter I now wished to speak to you,’ replied the stranger. ‘What are you to do? Your path – in as far as human wisdom is accessible to me – is clear. All your misfortunes have resulted from the passions natural to mankind. Passion has seduced you and led you so far that you have suffered. Such are the ordinary lessons of life. We should avail ourselves of them. You have learnt much and know what is bitter and what is sweet, you cannot now repeat those mistakes. Profit by your experience. What distresses you most is your enmity towards your father. That enmity is due to your position. Choose another and it will cease, or at least will not manifest itself so painfully. All your misfortunes are the result of the irregularity of your situation. You gave yourself up to youthful pleasures: that was natural and therefore good. But it was good only as long as it corresponded to your age. That time passed, but though you had grown to manhood you still devoted yourself to the frivolities of youth, and this was bad. You have reached an age when you should recognize that you are a man, a citizen, and should serve the State and work on its behalf. Your father wishes you to marry. His advice is wise. You have outlived one phase of life – your y
outh – and have reached another. All your troubles are indications of a period of transition. Recognize that youth has passed, boldly throw aside all that was natural to it but not natural for a man, and enter upon a new path. Marry, give up the amusements of youth, apply yourself to commerce, public affairs, the sciences and arts, and you will not only be reconciled to your father and friends, but will yourself find peace and happiness. You have reached manhood, and should marry and be a husband. So my chief advice is: accede to your father’s wish and marry. If you are attracted by the seclusion you thought to find among the Christians, if you are inclined to philosophy and not towards an active life, you can with advantage devote yourself to it only after you have experienced the real meaning of life. But you will know that only as an independent citizen and the head of a family. If afterwards you still feel drawn to solitude, yield to that feeling. It will then be a true desire and not a mere flash of vexation such as it is now. Then go!’

  These last words persuaded Julius more than anything else. He thanked the stranger and returned home.

  His mother welcomed him with joy. His father too, on hearing of his intention to submit to his will and marry the girl he had chosen for him, was reconciled to his son.

  IV

  THREE months later the marriage of Julius with the beautiful Eulampia was celebrated. The young couple lived in a separate house belonging to Julius, and he took over a branch of his father’s business which was transferred to him. He had now changed his way of life entirely.

  One day he went on business to a neighbouring town, and there, while sitting in a shop, he saw Pamphilius passing by with a girl whom Julius did not know. They both carried heavy baskets of grapes which they were selling. On seeing his friend, Julius went out to him and asked him into the shop to have a talk.