by Leo Tolstoy
‘Are you hurt, Alyosha?’
‘I reckon you could say that again. But not to worry.’
He tried to stand up, but could not, and he began to smile. They carried him into the yardman’s lodge. The doctor’s assistant arrived. He examined Alyosha and asked him where it hurt.
‘It hurts all over, but it’s not too bad. But the master’s going to be upset. And they ought to send word to my old man.’
Alyosha lay in bed for two days and nights, and on the third day they sent for the priest.
‘And what if you should be going to die?’ asked Ustinya.
‘What if I am? We don’t go on living for ever, do we? You’ve got to go sometime,’ said Alyosha quickly, in his usual tone of voice. ‘Thank you, Ustinya, for having pity on me. But it was really better that they didn’t let me get married, it wouldn’t have been any good. And now we’re on friendly terms, you and me.’
He accompanied the priest’s prayers only with his hands and in his heart. But in his heart was the knowledge that life here on earth is good if you do what you are told and don’t offend people, and there too it will be good.
He did not say very much. He just asked for something to drink, and as he drank it he looked as if he was surprised at something.
He looked surprised, stretched himself out, and died.
WHAT FOR? A story from the time of the Polish insurrections
I
IN the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczewski, who was living on his ancestral estate of Rozanka, received a visit from his late friend’s only son, the young Josif Migurski. Jaczewski was an old man of sixty-five with a wide forehead, broad shoulders and a broad chest and long white whiskers on his brickred face, and he was a patriot from the time of the Second Partition of Poland. As a young man he had served alongside Migurski the elder under the banner of Kosciuszko and he detested with all the strength of his patriotic soul the ‘whore of the Apocalypse’, as he called her, the Empress Catherine II, and her loathsome, traitorous lover Poniatowski, and he likewise believed in the restoration of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania,1 just as he believed at night that the sun would rise again by the next morning. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he worshipped. Napoleon’s downfall grieved him but he did not abandon the hope of a restoration of the Polish kingdom, were it only a mutilated one. The opening of the Sejm2 in Warsaw by Alexander I revived his hopes, but the Holy Alliance and the triumph of the general reaction across the whole of Europe, and the petty tyranny of the Grand Duke Constantine put off indefinitely any realization of his cherished longings … After 1825 Jaczewski made his home in the country, spending his time without interruption at Rozanka and occupying himself with farming, hunting, and the reading of newspapers and letters, by which means he continued ardently to follow political events in his homeland. He had taken as his second wife a beautiful but impoverished woman from the szlachta,3 and the marriage was not a happy one. He neither loved nor respected this second wife of his: he felt her to be an encumbrance and treated her harshly and rudely, as if her were punishing her for his own mistake in remarrying. He had no children by his second wife. From the first marriage there were two daughters: the elder, Wanda, a stately beauty who was aware of the value of her attractions and was bored by country life; and the younger, Albina, her father’s darling, a lively, bony little girl with curly blonde hair and, like her father, large widely-spaced sparkling blue eyes.
Albina was fifteen years old at the time of Josif Migurski’s visit. Migurski had in fact stayed with the Jaczewskis before as a student, in Wilno where they spent the winters, and had paid court to Wanda, but now he was coming to visit them in the country for the first time as a grown up and independent young man. The arrival of young Migurski was agreeable to all the inhabitants of Rozanka. The old man liked Josif Migurski because he reminded him of his friend, Josif’s father, of the time when they were both young, and of how they had talked together with great passion and the rosiest hopes about the current revolutionary ferment – and not only in Poland but also abroad, whence he had just returned. Pani Jaczewska liked him because when there were guests present old Jaczewski restrained himself and did not scold her for everything in his usual manner. Wanda liked him because she was sure that Migurski had come for her sake and that he intended to propose to her: she was preparing to accept, but she intended, as she expressed it to herself, to ‘lui tenir la dragée haute’.4 Albina was glad because everyone else was glad. Wanda was not the only one convinced that Migurski had come with the intention of asking for her hand. The entire household, from old Jaczewski down to nanny Ludwika, thought so, although nobody said anything.
And they were correct. Migurski had arrived with that intention, but at the end of a week he left again, somehow confused and downcast, without having made any proposal. They were all surprised by this unexpected departure and no one, with the exception of Albina, understood the reason for it. Albina knew that the cause of his strange departure was she herself.
The whole time he had been at Rozanka she had noticed that Migurski seemed particularly animated and cheerful only when he was with her. He treated her like a child, joking with her and teasing her, but with her feminine intuition she sensed that underneath this treatment of her there lay not the attitude of an adult towards a child, but that of a man towards a woman. She could see this in the admiring expression and affectionate smile with which he greeted her whenever she came into the room and took his leave of her when she left. She had no clear awareness of what was happening, but his attitude towards her made her feel happy, and she unconsciously did her best to please him. In fact anything she could possibly have done would have pleased him. And so when he was present she did everything with a special kind of excitement. He was pleased when she ran races with her beautiful greyhound and it jumped up and licked her flushed, radiant face; he was pleased when at the slightest pretext she broke into loud and infectious laughter; he was pleased when, continuing her merry laughter in the expression of her eyes, she put on a serious face to listen to the Catholic priest’s boring homily; he was pleased when, with exceptional accuracy and humour, she mimicked first her old nanny, then a drunken neighbour, and then Migurski himself, switching in an instant from the depiction of one to the depiction of the next. Most of all he was pleased by her enthusiastic joie de vivre. It was just as though she had only just realized the full charm of life and was hastening to enjoy it to the utmost. He liked this special joie de vivre of hers, and this joie de vivre was aroused and heightened especially when she was aware that it was delightful to him. And so it was that Albina alone was aware why Migurski, who had come to propose to Wanda, had gone away without doing so. Although she could not have brought herself to tell anybody and did not confess it directly even to herself, in the depths of her soul she knew that he had wanted to fall in love with her sister, but had actually fallen in love with her, Albina. Albina was greatly astonished at this, counting herself totally insignificant in comparison with the clever, well-educated and beautiful Wanda, but she could not help knowing that it was so and she could not help rejoicing in the fact, because she herself had come to love Migurski with all the strength of her soul, to love him as people only love for the first, the only time in their lives.
II
At the end of the summer the newspapers brought the news of the July Revolution in Paris. After that news began to arrive of impending disorders in Warsaw. With a mixture of fear and hope Jaczewski awaited with every post news of the assassination of Constantine and the beginning of a revolution. At last in November the news arrived at Rozanka – first of the attack on the Belvedere Palace and the flight of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich; then that the Sejm had pronounced that the Romanov dynasty had been deprived of the Polish throne and that Chlopicki had been proclaimed dictator and the Polish people were once more free.
The insurrection had not yet reached Rozanka, but all the inhabitants followed its progress, awaiting its arr
ival in their home region and making ready for it. Old Jaczewski corresponded with an acquaintance of long ago who was one of the leaders of the insurrection, received a number of secretive Jewish commercial agents not on economic but on revolutionary business, and prepared to join the insurrection when the time should be right. Pani Jaczewska concerned herself as always, but now more than ever, with her husband’s material comforts, and by that very fact managed to irritate him more and more. Wanda sent off her diamonds to a girlfriend in Warsaw so that the money obtained for them could be given to the revolutionary committee. Albina was interested only in what Migurski was doing. She learned via her father that he had enlisted in Dwernicki’s detachment and she tried to find out all she could about that particular detachment. Migurski wrote twice: the first time to inform them that he had joined the army; and the second time, in mid-February, an enthusiastic letter about the Polish victory at the battle of Stoczek, where they had captured six Russian guns and some prisoners.
‘Zwyciestwo polakòw i kleska moskali! Wiwat!’5 – he wrote at the conclusion of his letter. Albina was in raptures. She scrutinized the map, trying to work out when and where the decisively defeated Muscovites must be, and she went pale and trembled as her father slowly unsealed the packets brought from the post office. On one occasion her stepmother chanced to go into Albina’s room and came upon her standing before the mirror wearing trousers and a konfederatka.6 Albina was getting ready to run away from home in male attire to join the Polish army. Her stepmother went and told her father. Her father summoned Albina to him, and concealing the sympathy, even admiration, he felt for her, delivered a stern rebuke, demanding that she should banish from her head any stupid ideas about taking part in the war. ‘A woman has a different duty to fulfil: to love and comfort those who are sacrificing themselves for the motherland’ – he told her. Now he needed her, she was a joy and a comfort to him; but the time would come when she would be needed in the same way by her husband. He knew how to persuade her. He reminded her that he was lonely and unhappy, and kissed her. She pressed her face against him, hiding the tears, which nevertheless moistened the sleeve of his dressing-gown, and promised him not to undertake anything without his agreement.
III
Only those who have experienced what the Poles experienced after the Partition of Poland and the subjection of one part of the country to the power of the hated Germans and another part to the power of the still more hated Muscovites, can understand the rapture which the Poles felt in the years 1830 and 1831 when, after their earlier unsuccessful attempts to liberate themselves, their new hope of liberation seemed about to be fulfilled. But this hope did not last long. The forces involved were too disproportionate and the attempted revolution was once again crushed. Once again tens of thousands of dumbly obedient Russians were herded into Poland, and at the command first of Diebitsch, then of Paskevich, quite without knowing why they were doing it, proceeded to soak the earth with their own blood and that of their Polish brothers, to crush them, and once more to set in power weak and worthless men who desired neither the freedom of the Poles nor their suppression, but simply and solely the satisfaction of their own greed and their childish vanity.
Warsaw was taken and the independent Polish detachments utterly defeated. Hundreds, thousands of people were shot, beaten with rods, or sent into exile. Among those exiled was young Migurski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself assigned as a common soldier to a line battalion at Uralsk.
The Jaczewskis spent the winter of 1832 at Wilno for the sake of the old man’s health: since 1831 he had been suffering from a heart ailment. Here a letter reached him from Migurski, written in the fortress where he was serving. He wrote that however hard were the experiences he had already gone through and which still awaited him, he rejoiced that it had been his destiny to suffer for his native land, that he did not despair of the sacred cause to which he had devoted part of his life and was ready to devote that which remained, and that if a new opportunity were to present itself tomorrow, then he would act again in precisely the same way. Reading the letter aloud, the old man burst into sobs when he reached this passage and for some time could not go on. In the final section of the letter, which Wanda read out, Migurski wrote that whatever his hopes and longings might have been at the time of his last visit to them, which would ever remain the brightest point of his whole life, now he could not and would not speak further about them.
Wanda and Albina each understood these words in her own way, but neither confided to anyone else exactly how she understood them. Migurski concluded his letter with greetings to all of them: among these he addressed Albina in the same playful tone he had adopted with her at the time of his visit, asking her whether she was still rushing about as she used to, running races with the greyhounds, and mimicking everyone so beautifully. To old Jaczewski he wished good health, to the mother success in household affairs, to Wanda that she should find a husband worthy of her, and to Albina that she should keep her joie de vivre.
IV
Old Jaczewski’s health grew ever worse and in 1833 the whole family went abroad. In Baden Wanda met a wealthy Polish emigré and married him. The old man’s condition rapidly declined, and at the beginning of 1833, while they were still abroad, he died. His wife he had not permitted to follow him, and to the very last he was unable to forgive her for the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Jaczewska returned to the country with Albina. The chief interest in Albina’s life was Migurski. In her eyes he was the greatest of heroes and a martyr, to whose service she had resolved to dedicate her own life. Before going abroad she had already struck up a correspondence with him, at first on her father’s behalf, then on her own. After her father’s death she returned to Russia and went on writing to him; and once her eighteenth birthday was past she declared to her stepmother that she had decided to travel to Uralsk to join Migurski and there become his wife. Her stepmother at once began accusing Migurski of selfishly wanting to relieve his own difficult situation by captivating a rich young woman and compelling her to share his misfortune. Albina grew angry and informed her stepmother that no one but she could think of imputing such base thoughts to a man who had sacrificed everything for his own nation, that Migurski had on the contrary refused the help she had offered him, and that she had decided irrevocably to join him and become his wife, if only he was prepared to grant her that happiness. Albina was now of age and had some money – the thirty thousand zlotys which her late uncle had left to each of his two nieces. So that there was nothing to hold her back.
In November 1833 Albina, as if for the last time, said farewell to the family who were tearfully seeing her off on her journey to this distant, unknown realm of barbarous Muscovy, took her seat alongside her devoted old nurse Ludwika whom she was taking with her, in her father’s old covered sleigh, newly repaired for this long journey, and set off on the highroad.
V
Migurski was living not in the barracks, but in separate quarters of his own. Tsar Nicholas I required that Polish officers who had been reduced to the ranks should not only have to put up with the hardships of an austere military life, but also suffer all the humiliations to which private soldiers were subjected at that time. But the majority of the ordinary men whose duty it was to carry out his orders were fully aware of the harshness of treatment meted out to these demoted officers, and without regard to the danger involved in any failure to carry out the Tsar’s will, deliberately failed to carry it out whenever they could. The semi-literate commander of the battalion to which Migurski had been assigned, a man who had been promoted from the ranks, understood the situation of this once wealthy, well-educated young man who had now lost everything: he felt sorry for him, respected him, and made all kinds of concessions in his favour. And Migurski could not help appreciating the generous spirit of the lieutenant colonel with the white side-whiskers on his puffy military face, and to recompense him Migurski agreed to give lessons in mathematics and French to his sons, who were preparin
g for entry to the military academy.
Migurski’s life at Uralsk, which had now been dragging on for some six months, was not only monotonous, dreary and dull, but very hard into the bargain. Apart from the battalion commander, from whom he attempted as far as possible to distance himself, his sole acquaintance was an exiled Pole, an uneducated and disagreeable man of a thrusting disposition who worked in the fishing trade. The principal hardship for Migurski lay in the difficulty he experienced in getting used to a life of poverty. Following the confiscation of his estate he had been left quite without financial means, and he was making ends meet by selling off whatever gold objects still remained to him.
The single great joy of his life in exile was his correspondence with Albina, and the charming, poetic image he had formed of her during his visit to Rozanka remained in his soul and now in his banishment grew ever more beautiful to him. In one of her first letters to him she asked him, among other things, about the meaning of his words in the earlier letter: ‘whatever my dreams and longings might have been’. He replied that now he was able to confess to her that his dreams were connected with his desire to call her his wife. She wrote back that she loved him too. He responded that it would have been better if she had not written that, for it was dreadful for him to think about something which was now most likely an impossibility. She said in her reply that it was not only possible, but would most certainly come about. He wrote back that he could not accept her sacrifice, and that in his present circumstances it simply could not be. Shortly after writing this letter he received a package of money to the value of two thousand zlotys. By the postmark on the envelope and the handwriting he could see that it had been sent by Albina, and recalled having jokingly described in one of his earliest letters the satisfaction he felt now at being able by the lessons he gave to earn enough to pay for all the things he needed – tea, tobacco, even books. He transferred the money to another envelope and returned it to her with a letter begging her not to destroy the sacred nature of their relationship by bringing money into it. He had enough of everything he needed, he wrote, and he was completely happy in the knowledge that he possessed such a friend as she was. With that their correspondence came to a stop.