by Leo Tolstoy
And the old man almost wept.
Nekhlyúdov woke up about eleven and called me in.
‘They haven’t sent me the money, but it is not my fault,’ he says. ‘Shut the door.’
I shut it.
‘Here,’ he says, ‘take this watch or this diamond pin and pawn it. They’ll give you more than a hundred and eighty rubles for it, and when I get the money I will buy them out,’ he says.
‘All right, sir,’ I say. ‘If you have no money it can’t be helped: let me have the watch – I’ll pawn it for you.’
I could see myself that the watch was worth three hundred rubles.
Well, I pawned it for a hundred rubles and brought him the ticket.
‘You’ll owe me eighty rubles, and you can redeem the watch yourself,’ I says.
Those eighty rubles are still owing me to this day!
So he kept coming to us every day again. I don’t know what arrangements there were between them but he and the prince always went about together, or they went upstairs with Fedót to play cards. And they had some queer accounts among the three of them! One gave to another, the other to the third, but you could not at all make out who was owing whom.
And he came to us in this way almost every day for two years. Only he had lost his old manner: he became bold, and it got to such a pitch that at times he’d borrow a ruble from me to pay his cab fare; yet he still played with the prince for a hundred rubles a game.
He grew thin, sallow, and gloomy. He’d come in, order a glass of absinthe at once, have a snack, and wash it down with port wine, and then he would seem a bit brighter.
He came one day during Carnival, and began playing with some hussar.
‘Do you want to have something on the game?’ says the hussar.
‘Certainly,’ he says. ‘How much?’
‘Shall it be a bottle of burgundy?’
‘All right.’
Well, the hussar won, and they sat down to dinner. They sat down, and Nekhlyúdov says at once:
‘Simon, a bottle of Clos Vougeot – and mind it’s properly warmed.’
Simon went out and brought some food, but no bottle.
‘Well, and the wine?’
Simon ran out and brought the joint.
‘Bring the wine,’ says Nekhlyúdov.
Simon says nothing.
‘Have you gone mad? We’re finishing dinner and there’s no wine. Who drinks it with the dessert?’
Simon ran out.
‘The proprietor would like to see you,’ he says.
Nekhlyúdov went quite red and jumped up from the table —
‘What does he want?’ he says.
The proprietor was standing at the door.
‘I can’t give you any more credit unless you pay me what you owe.’
‘But I told you I’d pay at the beginning of next month!’
‘As you please, but I can’t go on giving credit and not receiving anything. As it is I lose tens of thousands by bad debts.’
‘Oh, come, mon cher,’ he says, ‘surely you can trust me! Send up the bottle, and I will try to pay you as soon as possible.’
And he ran back.
‘What did they call you away for?’ asked the hussar.
‘Just to ask me about something.’
‘A little warm wine now would be just the thing,’ says the hussar.
‘Well, Simon, how about it?’
Poor Simon ran out again. Again there was no wine or anything. It was a bad lookout. Nekhlyúdov got up from the table and came to me.
‘For God’s sake, Petrúshka,’ he says, ‘let me have six rubles.’
He looked beside himself.
‘I haven’t got it, sir, on my word! As it is you’re owing me a lot.’
‘I’ll give you forty rubles in a week’s time for the six!’
‘If I had it,’ I says, ‘I wouldn’t dare refuse you, but really I haven’t got it.’
And what do you think? He rushed out, clenching his teeth, and ran up and down the corridor like a madman, banging himself on the forehead.
‘Oh, my God!’ he says. ‘What does it mean?’
He didn’t even go back to the dining-room, but jumped into a carriage and drove off.
How they laughed! The hussar says:
‘Where’s the gentleman who was dining with me?’
‘Gone,’ they say.
‘What do you mean – gone? What message did he leave?’
‘He didn’t leave any message,’ they tell him. ‘He just got in and drove away.’
‘A fine goose!’ he says.
‘Well,’ I think to myself, ‘now he won’t come for a long time, after such a disgrace.’ But next day towards evening he came again, just the same. He went to the billiard-room with a box of some kind he had brought with him. He took off his overcoat.
‘Let’s play!’ he says, looking from under his brows very cross.
We played a game.
‘That’s enough,’ he says. ‘Go and get me a pen and paper. I have to write a letter.’
Thinking nothing and guessing nothing, I brought the paper and put it on the table in the little room.
‘It’s all ready, sir,’ I says.
Well, so he sat down at the table and wrote and wrote something; then he jumped up frowning.
‘Go and see if my carriage has come!’
It happened on the Friday in Carnival Week, so none of our gentlemen were there: they had all gone to balls.
I was just going to find out about the carriage, but was hardly out of the door when he cried: ‘Petrúshka! Petrúshka!’ as if frightened of something.
I came back, and there he stood as white as a sheet, looking at me.
‘You were pleased to call me, sir?’ I says.
He was silent.
‘What is it you want, sir?’
He was still silent.
‘Oh, yes! Let’s have another game,’ he says.
Well, he won the game.
‘Have I learnt to play well?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ says I.
‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘Now go and find out about my carriage.’
And he paces up and down the room.
Without thinking anything, I went out onto the porch and saw that there was no carriage there at all, and went back.
As I go back it sounds as if someone had given a knock with a cue.
I go into the billiard-room – there’s a strange smell.
I look: and there he lies on the floor covered with blood, with a pistol thrown down beside him. I was so frightened that I could not say a word.
He jerked his leg again and again and stretched himself. Then his throat rattled, and he stretched out like this.
And why such a sinful thing happened to him – I mean, why he ruined his soul – God alone knows: he left nothing but this paper behind, but I can’t understand it at all.
Really, what things gentlemen do! … Gentlefolk – that’s it – gentlefolk!
‘God gave me everything man can desire: wealth, a name, intelligence, and noble aspirations. I wanted to enjoy myself and trampled in the mire all that was good in me.
‘I am not dishonoured, not unfortunate, have committed no crime; but I have done worse – I have killed my feelings, my reason, my youth.
‘I am enmeshed in a dirty net from which I cannot free myself and to which I cannot get used. I continually fall and fall, feel myself falling, and cannot stop.
‘It would be easier if I were dishonoured, unfortunate, or a criminal. Then there would be some consolation of gloomy greatness in my despair. If I were dishonoured I could raise myself above the perception of honour held in our society and could despise it.
‘If I were unfortunate I could complain. If I had committed a crime I might redeem it by repentance or by suffering punishment: but I am merely base, nasty – I know it and cannot raise myself.
‘And what has ruined me? Had I some strong passion which could be my excuse? No.
‘Sevens, aces, champagne, the yellow in the middle pocket, grey or rainbow-coloured currency notes, cigarettes, women who could be bought – those are my recollections!
‘One terrible moment when I forgot myself, a humiliation I shall never wipe out, has made me recollect myself. I was horrified when I saw what an immeasurable gulf separates me from what I wished to be and might have been. In my imagination the dreams and thoughts of my youth reappeared.
‘Where are those bright thoughts of life, of eternity, of God, which filled my soul so clearly and powerfully? Where is that force of love – not confined to any person – that filled my soul with such joyful warmth? Where is my hope of development, my sympathy with all that is excellent, my love of my relations, neighbours, work, and fame? Where is my sense of duty?
‘I was insulted – and challenged the man to a duel and thought I had fully satisfied the demands of honour. I needed money to satisfy my vices and vanity, and I ruined a thousand families entrusted to me by God and did it without shame – I who so well understood those sacred obligations. A dishonourable man told me that I had no conscience and that I wished to steal – and I remained friends with him because he was a dishonourable man and told me that he had not meant to offend me. I was told that it was ridiculous to be chaste and I abandoned without regret the flower of my soul – my innocence – to a purchasable woman.
‘And how good and happy I might have been had I trodden the path which on entering life my fresh mind and my childlike, genuine feeling indicated to me! More than once I tried to escape from the rut in which my life was moving and get back to that bright path. I told myself: I will use all the will I have – but I could not. When I remained alone I felt awkward and afraid of myself. When I was with others I no longer heard the inner voice at all, and sank lower and lower.
‘At last I reached the terrible conviction that I could not rise, and left off thinking of doing so and tried to forget myself; but hopeless remorse tormented me still more. Then the idea – terrible to others but comforting to me – of suicide first occurred to me. But in that respect also I was mean and base. Only yesterday’s stupid affair with the hussar gave me sufficient resolution to carry out my intention. Nothing honourable remained in me – only vanity, and out of vanity I am doing the one good action of my life. I formerly thought that the proximity of death would uplift my soul. I was mistaken. In a quarter of an hour I shall be no more, yet my views have not changed at all. I still see, still hear, still think, in the same way. There is the same strange inconsistency, inconsequence, vacillation, and levity in my thoughts – so contrary to the unity and clarity that man is – God knows why – able to conceive of. Thoughts of what will be beyond the tomb and of what will be said tomorrow about my death at Aunt Rtíshcheva’s present themselves to me with equal force.’
1 Pan in Polish and Ukrainian means ‘squire’ or ‘gentleman’.
2 The players put the money they staked in the pockets of the billiard-table, and the player who pocketed a ball took the money when he took the ball out.
3 In the game of ‘five balls’ to pot the yellow ball in the middle pocket scores twelve, and to run in off it counts six, so that the two together at one stroke scores eighteen.
THE SNOW STORM
A SHORT STORY
I
HAVING drunk tea towards seven o’clock in the evening, I left a station, the name of which I have forgotten, though I know it was somewhere in the district of the Don Cossack Army near Novocherkássk. It was already dark when, having wrapped myself in my fur coat, I took my seat under the apron beside Alëshka in the sledge. Near the post-station it seemed mild and calm. Though no snow was falling, not a star was visible overhead and the sky looked extremely low and black, in contrast to the clean snowy plain spread out before us.
We had hardly passed the dark shapes of the windmills, one of which clumsily turned its large sails, and left the settlement behind us, when I noticed that the road had become heavier and deeper in snow, that the wind blew more fiercely on the left, tossing the horses’ tails and manes sideways, and that it kept carrying away the snow stirred up by the hoofs and sledge-runners. The sound of the bell began to die down, and through some opening in my sleeve a stream of cold air forced its way behind my back, and I recalled the station-master’s advice, not to start for fear of going astray all night and being frozen on the road.
‘Shan’t we be losing our way?’ I said to the driver, and not receiving an answer I put my question more definitely: ‘I say, driver, do you think we shall reach the next station without losing our way?’
‘God only knows,’ he answered without turning his head. ‘Just see how the snow drifts along the ground! Nothing of the road to be seen. O Lord!’
‘Yes, but you’d better tell me whether you expect to get me to the next station or not?’ I insisted. ‘Shall we get there?’
‘We ought to manage it,’ said the driver, and went on to add something the wind prevented my hearing.
I did not feel inclined to turn back, but the idea of straying about all night in the frost and snow storm on the perfectly bare steppe which made up that part of the Don Army district was also far from pleasant. Moreover, though I could not see my driver very well in the dark, I did not much like the look of him and he did not inspire me with confidence. He sat exactly in the middle of his seat with his legs in, instead of to one side; he was too big, he spoke lazily, his cap, not like those usually worn by drivers, was too big and flopped from side to side; besides, he did not urge the horses on properly, but held the reins in both hands, like a footman who had taken the coachman’s place on the box. But my chief reason for not believing in him was because he had a kerchief tied over his ears. In a word he did not please me, and that solemn stooping back of his looming in front of me seemed to bode no good.
‘In my opinion we’d better turn back,’ remarked Alëshka. ‘There’s no sense in getting lost!’
‘O Lord! Just look how the snow is driving, nothing of the road to be seen, and it’s closing my eyes right up … O Lord!’ muttered the driver.
We had not been going a quarter of an hour before the driver handed the reins to Alëshka, clumsily liberated his legs, and making the snow crunch with his big boots went to look for the track.
‘What is it? Where are you going? Are we off the road?’ I asked. But the driver did not answer and, turning his face away from the wind which was beating into his eyes, walked away from the sledge.
‘Well, is there a road?’ I asked when he returned.
‘No, there’s nothing,’ he answered with sudden impatience and irritation, as if I were to blame that he had strayed off the track, and having slowly thrust his big legs again into the front of the sledge he began arranging the reins with his frozen gloves.
‘What are we to do?’ I asked when we had started again.
‘What are we to do? We’ll drive where God sends us.’
And though we were quite evidently not following a road, we went on at the same slow trot, now through dry snow five inches deep, and now over brittle crusts of frozen snow.
Though it was cold, the snow on my fur collar melted very quickly; the drift along the ground grew worse and worse, and a few dry flakes began to fall from above.
It was plain that we were going heaven knows where, for having driven for another quarter of an hour we had not seen a single verst-post.
‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked the driver again. ‘Shall we get to the station?’
‘What station? We shall get back, if we give the horses their head they will take us there, but hardly to the next station – we might just perish.’
‘Well then, let us go back,’ I said. ‘And really …’
‘Then I am to turn back?’ said the driver.
‘Yes, yes, turn back!’
The driver gave the horses the reins. They began to run faster, and though I did not notice that we were turning, I felt the wind blowing from a different quarter, and we
soon saw the windmills appearing through the snow. The driver cheered up and began to talk.
‘The other day the return sledges from the other station spent the whole night in a snow storm among haystacks and did not get in till the morning. Lucky that they got among those stacks, else they’d have all been frozen, it was so cold. As it is one of them had his feet frozen, and was at death’s door for three weeks with them.’
‘But it’s not cold now, and it seems calmer,’ I said. ‘We might perhaps go on?’
‘It’s warm enough, that’s true, but the snow is drifting. Now that we have it at our back it seems easier, but the snow is driving strongly. I might go if it were on courier-duty or something of the kind, but not of my own free will. It’s no joke if a passenger gets frozen. How am I to answer for your honour afterwards?’
II
JUST then we heard behind us the bells of several tróykas1 which were rapidly overtaking us.
‘It’s the courier’s bell,’ said my driver. ‘There’s no other like it in the district.’
And in fact the bell of the front tróyka, the sound of which was already clearly borne to us by the wind, was exceedingly fine: clear, sonorous, deep, and slightly quivering. As I learnt afterwards it had been chosen by men who made a hobby of tróyka bells. There were three bells – a large one in the middle with what is called a crimson tone, and two small ones tuned to a third and a fifth. The ringing of that third and of the quivering fifth echoing in the air was extraordinarily effective and strangely beautiful in that silent and deserted steppe.
‘The post is going,’ said my driver, when the first of the three tróykas overtook us. ‘How is the road? Is it usable?’ he called out to the driver of the last sledge, but the man only shouted at his horses and did not reply.
The sound of the bells was quickly lost in the wind as soon as the post sledges had passed us.