by Leo Tolstoy
I had given up my music altogether since the time of our first visit to Petersburg; but now the old piano and the old music tempted me to begin again.
One day I was not well and stayed indoors alone. My husband had taken Kátya and Sónya to see the new buildings at Nikólskoe. Tea was laid; I went downstairs and while waiting for them sat down at the piano. I opened the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and began to play. There was no one within sight or sound, the windows were open over the garden, and the familiar sounds floated through the room with a solemn sadness. At the end of the first movement I looked round instinctively to the corner where he used once to sit and listen to my playing. He was not there; his chair, long unmoved, was still in its place; through the window I could see a lilac-bush against the light of the setting sun; the freshness of evening streamed in through the open windows. I rested my elbows on the piano and covered my face with both hands; and so I sat for a long time, thinking. I recalled with pain the irrevocable past, and timidly imagined the future. But for me there seemed to be no future, no desires at all and no hopes. ‘Can life be over for me?’ I thought with horror; then I looked up, and, trying to forget and not to think, I began playing the same movement over again. ‘O God!’ I prayed, ‘forgive me if I have sinned, or restore to me all that once blossomed in my heart, or teach me what to do and how to live now.’ There was a sound of wheels on the grass and before the steps of the house; then I heard cautious and familiar footsteps pass along the veranda and cease; but my heart no longer replied to the sound. When I stopped playing the footsteps were behind me and a hand was laid on my shoulder.
‘How clever of you to think of playing that!’ he said.
I said nothing.
‘Have you had tea?’ he asked.
I shook my head without looking at him – I was unwilling to let him see the signs of emotion on my face.
‘They’ll be here immediately,’ he said; ‘the horse gave trouble, and they got out on the high road to walk home.’
‘Let us wait for them,’ I said, and went out to the veranda, hoping that he would follow; but he asked about the children and went upstairs to see them. Once more his presence and simple kindly voice made me doubt if I had really lost anything. What more could I wish? ‘He is kind and gentle, a good husband, a good father; I don’t know myself what more I want.’ I sat down under the veranda awning on the very bench on which I had sat when we became engaged. The sun had set, it was growing dark, and a little spring rain-cloud hung over the house and garden, and only behind the trees the horizon was clear, with the fading glow of twilight, in which one star had just begun to twinkle. The landscape, covered by the shadow of the cloud, seemed waiting for the light spring shower. There was not a breath of wind; not a single leaf or blade of grass stirred; the scent of lilac and bird-cherry was so strong in the garden and veranda that it seemed as if all the air was in flower; it came in wafts, now stronger and now weaker, till one longed to shut both eyes and ears and drink in that fragrance only. The dahlias and rose-bushes, not yet in flower, stood motionless on the black mould of the border, looking as if they were growing slowly upwards on their white-shaved props; beyond the dell, the frogs were making the most of their time before the rain drove them to the pond, croaking busily and loudly. Only the high continuous note of water falling at some distance rose above their croaking. From time to time the nightingales called to one another, and I could hear them flitting restlessly from bush to bush. Again this spring a nightingale had tried to build in a bush under the window, and I heard her fly off across the avenue when I went into the veranda. From there she whistled once and then stopped; she, too, was expecting the rain.
I tried in vain to calm my feelings: I had a sense of anticipation and regret.
He came downstairs again and sat down beside me.
‘I am afraid they will get wet,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I answered; and we sat for long without speaking.
The cloud came down lower and lower with no wind. The air grew stiller and more fragrant. Suddenly a drop fell on the canvas awning and seemed to rebound from it; then another broke on the gravel path; soon there was a splash on the burdock leaves, and a fresh shower of big drops came down faster and faster. Nightingales and frogs were both dumb; only the high note of the falling water, though the rain made it seem more distant, still went on; and a bird, which must have sheltered among the dry leaves near the veranda, steadily repeated its two unvarying notes. My husband got up to go in.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, trying to keep him; ‘it is so pleasant here.’
‘We must send them an umbrella and goloshes,’ he replied.
‘Don’t trouble – it will soon be over.’
He thought I was right, and we remained together in the veranda. I rested one hand upon the wet slippery rail and put my head out. The fresh rain wetted my hair and neck in places. The cloud, growing lighter and thinner, was passing overhead; the steady patter of the rain gave place to occasional drops that fell from the sky or dripped from the trees. The frogs began to croak again in the dell; the nightingales woke up and began to call from the dripping bushes from one side and then from another. The whole prospect before us grew clear.
‘How delightful!’ he said, seating himself on the veranda rail and passing a hand over my wet hair.
This simple caress had on me the effect of a reproach: I felt inclined to cry.
‘What more can a man need?’ he said; ‘I am so content now that I want nothing; I am perfectly happy!’
He told me a different story once, I thought. He had said that, however great his happiness might be, he always wanted more and more. Now he is calm and contented; while my heart is full of unspoken repentance and unshed tears.
‘I think it delightful too,’ I said; ‘but I am sad just because of the beauty of it all. All is so fair and lovely outside me, while my own heart is confused and baffled and full of vague unsatisfied longing. Is it possible that there is no element of pain, no yearning for the past, in your enjoyment of nature?’
He took his hand off my head and was silent for a little.
‘I used to feel that too,’ he said, as though recalling it, ‘especially in spring. I used to sit up all night too, with my hopes and fears for company, and good company they were! But life was all before me then. Now it is all behind me, and I am content with what I have. I find life capital,’ he added with such careless confidence, that I believed, whatever pain it gave me to hear it, that it was the truth.
‘But is there nothing you wish for?’ I asked.
‘I don’t ask for impossibilities,’ he said, guessing my thoughts. ‘You go and get your head wet,’ he added, stroking my head like a child’s and again passing his hand over the wet hair; ‘you envy the leaves and the grass their wetting from the rain, and you would like yourself to be the grass and the leaves and the rain. But I am content to enjoy them and everything else that is good and young and happy.’
‘And do you regret nothing of the past?’ I asked, while my heart grew heavier and heavier.
Again he thought for a time before replying. I saw that he wished to reply with perfect frankness.
‘Nothing,’ he said shortly.
‘Not true! not true!’ I said, turning towards him and looking into his eyes. ‘Do you really not regret the past?’
‘No!’ he repeated; ‘I am grateful for it, but I don’t regret it.’
‘But would you not like to have it back?’ I asked.
He turned away and looked out over the garden.
‘No; I might as well wish to have wings. It is impossible.’
‘And would you not alter the past? do you not reproach yourself or me?’
‘No, never! It was all for the best.’
‘Listen to me!’ I said, touching his arm to make him look round. ‘Why did you never tell me that you wished me to live as you really wished me to? Why did you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me? If you had wi
shed it, if you had guided me differently, none of all this would have happened!’ said I in a voice that increasingly expressed cold displeasure and reproach, in place of the love of former days.
‘What would not have happened?’ he asked, turning to me in surprise. ‘As it is, there is nothing wrong. Things are all right, quite all right,’ he added with a smile.
‘Does he really not understand?’ I thought; ‘or, still worse, does he not wish to understand?’
Then I suddenly broke out. ‘Had you acted differently, I should not now be punished, for no fault at all, by your indifference and even contempt, and you would not have taken from me unjustly all that I valued in life!’
‘What do you mean, my dear one?’ he asked – he seemed not to understand me.
‘No! don’t interrupt me! You have taken from me your confidence, your love, even your respect; for I cannot believe, when I think of the past, that you still love me. No! don’t speak! I must once for all say out what has long been torturing me. Is it my fault that I knew nothing of life, and that you left me to learn experience for myself? Is it my fault that now, when I have gained the knowledge and have been struggling for nearly a year to come back to you, you push me away and pretend not to understand what I want? And you always do it so that it is impossible to reproach you, while I am guilty and unhappy. Yes, you wish to drive me out again to that life which might rob us both of happiness.’
‘How did I show that?’ he asked in evident alarm and surprise.
‘No later than yesterday you said, and you constantly say, that I can never settle down here, and that we must spend this winter too at Petersburg; and I hate Petersburg!’ I went on. ‘Instead of supporting me, you avoid all plain speaking, you never say a single frank affectionate word to me. And then, when I fall utterly, you will reproach me and rejoice in my fall.’
‘Stop!’ he said with cold severity. ‘You have no right to say that. It only proves that you are ill-disposed towards me, that you don’t …’
‘That I don’t love you? Don’t hesitate to say it!’ I cried, and the tears began to flow. I sat down on the bench and covered my face with my handkerchief.
‘So that is how he understood me!’ I thought, trying to restrain the sobs which choked me. ‘Gone, gone is our former love!’ said a voice at my heart. He did not come close or try to comfort me. He was hurt by what I had said. When he spoke, his tone was cool and dry.
‘I don’t know what you reproach me with,’ he began. ‘If you mean that I don’t love you as I once did …’
‘Did love!’ I said, with my face buried in the handkerchief, while the bitter tears fell still more abundantly.
‘If so, time is to blame for that, and we ourselves. Each time of life has its own kind of love.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Shall I tell you the whole truth, if you really wish for frankness? In that summer when I first knew you, I used to lie awake all night, thinking about you, and I made that love myself, and it grew and grew in my heart. So again, in Petersburg and abroad, in the course of horrible sleepless nights, I strove to shatter and destroy that love, which had come to torture me. I did not destroy it, but I destroyed that part of it which gave me pain. Then I grew calm; and I feel love still, but it is a different kind of love.’
‘You call it love, but I call it torture!’ I said. ‘Why did you allow me to go into society, if you thought so badly of it that you ceased to love me on that account?’
‘No, it was not society, my dear,’ he said.
‘Why did you not exercise your authority?’ I went on; ‘why did you not lock me up or kill me? That would have been better than the loss of all that formed my happiness. I should have been happy, instead of being ashamed.’
I began to sob again and hid my face.
Just then Kátya and Sónya, wet and cheerful, came out to the veranda, laughing and talking loudly. They were silent as soon as they saw us, and went in again immediately.
We remained silent for a long time. I had had my cry out and felt relieved. I glanced at him. He was sitting with his head resting on his hand; he intended to make some reply to my glance, but only sighed deeply and resumed his former position.
I went up to him and removed his hand. His eyes turned thoughtfully to my face.
‘Yes,’ he began, as if continuing his thoughts aloud, ‘all of us, and especially you women, must have personal experience of all the nonsense of life, in order to get back to life itself; the evidence of other people is no good. At that time you had not got near the end of that charming nonsense which I admired in you. So I let you go through it alone, feeling that I had no right to put pressure on you, though my own time for that sort of thing was long past.’
‘If you loved me,’ I said, ‘how could you stand beside me and suffer me to go through it?’
‘Because it was impossible for you to take my word for it, though you would have tried to. Personal experience was necessary, and now you have had it.’
‘There was much calculation in all that,’ I said, ‘but little love.’
Again we were silent.
‘What you said just now is severe, but it is true,’ he began, rising suddenly and beginning to walk about the veranda. ‘Yes, it is true. I was to blame,’ he added, stopping opposite me; ‘I ought either to have kept myself from loving you at all, or to have loved you in a simpler way.’
‘Let us forget it all,’ I said timidly.
‘No,’ he said; ‘the past can never come back, never’; and his voice softened as he spoke.
‘It is restored already,’ I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He took my hand away and pressed it.
‘I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for that past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it is all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but …’
‘Do not say that!’ I broke in. ‘Let all be as it was before! Surely that is possible?’ I asked, looking into his eyes; but their gaze was clear and calm, and did not look deeply into mine.
Even while I spoke, I knew that my wishes and my petition were impossible. He smiled calmly and gently; and I thought it the smile of an old man.
‘How young you are still!’ he said, ‘and I am so old. What you seek in me is no longer there. Why deceive ourselves?’ he added, still smiling.
I stood silent opposite to him, and my heart grew calmer.
‘Don’t let us try to repeat life,’ he went on. ‘Don’t let us make pretences to ourselves. Let us be thankful that there is an end of the old emotions and excitements. The excitement of searching is over for us; our quest is done, and happiness enough has fallen to our lot. Now we must stand aside and make room – for him, if you like,’ he said, pointing to the nurse who was carrying Ványa out and had stopped at the veranda door. ‘That’s the truth, my dear one,’ he said, drawing down my head and kissing it, not a lover any longer but an old friend.
The fragrant freshness of the night rose ever stronger and sweeter from the garden; the sounds and the silence grew more solemn; star after star began to twinkle overhead. I looked at him, and suddenly my heart grew light; it seemed that the cause of my suffering had been removed like an aching nerve. Suddenly I realized clearly and calmly that the past feeling, like the past time itself, was gone beyond recall, and that it would be not only impossible but painful and uncomfortable to bring it back. And after all, was that time so good which seemed to me so happy? And it was all so long, long ago!
‘Time for tea!’ he said, and we went together to the parlour. At the door we met the nurse with the baby. I took him in my arms, covered his bare little red legs, pressed him to me, and kissed him with the lightest touch of my lips. Half asleep, he moved the parted fingers of one creased little hand and opened dim little eyes, as if he was looking for something or recalling something. All at once his eyes rested on
me, a spark of consciousness shone in them, the little pouting lips, parted before, now met and opened in a smile. ‘Mine, mine, mine!’ I thought, pressing him to my breast with such an impulse of joy in every limb that I found it hard to restrain myself from hurting him. I fell to kissing the cold little feet, his stomach and hand and head with its thin covering of down. My husband came up to me, and I quickly covered the child’s face and uncovered it again.
‘Iván Sergéich!’ said my husband, tickling him under the chin. But I made haste to cover Iván Sergéich up again. None but I had any business to look long at him. I glanced at my husband. His eyes smiled as he looked at me; and I looked into them with an ease and happiness which I had not felt for a long time.
That day ended the romance of our marriage; the old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance; but a new feeling of love for my children and the father of my children laid the foundation of a new life and a quite different happiness; and that life and happiness have lasted to the present time.
1 It is the custom in Russia to congratulate anyone on his or her birthday, and also on receiving Communion.
2 ‘The better is the enemy of the good.’
3 ‘Good luck, my friend!’
4 ‘I love you.’
THREE DEATHS
A TALE
I
IT was autumn. Two vehicles were going along the highway at a quick trot. In the first sat two women: a lady, thin and pale, and a maidservant, plump and rosy and shining. The maid’s short dry hair escaped from under her faded bonnet and her red hand in its torn glove kept pushing it back by fits and starts; her full bosom, covered by a woollen shawl, breathed health, her quick black eyes now watched the fields as they glided past the window, now glanced timidly at her mistress, and now restlessly scanned the corners of the carriage. In front of her nose dangled her mistress’s bonnet, pinned to the luggage carrier, on her lap lay a puppy, her feet were raised on the boxes standing on the floor and just audibly tapped against them to the creaking of the coach-springs and the clatter of the window-panes.