by Leo Tolstoy
The sight of his young host’s good fortune humiliated Serpukhovskóy, awakening a painful envy in him as he recalled his own irrecoverable past.
‘Do you mind my smoking a cigar, Marie?’ he asked, addressing the lady in that peculiar tone acquired only by experience – the tone, polite and friendly but not quite respectful, in which men who know the world speak to kept women in contradistinction to wives. Not that he wished to offend her: on the contrary he now wished rather to curry favour with her and with her keeper, though he would on no account have acknowledged the fact to himself. But he was accustomed to speak in that way to such women. He knew she would herself be surprised and even offended were he to treat her as a lady. Besides he had to retain a certain shade of a respectful tone for his friend’s real wife. He always treated his friends’ mistresses with respect, not because he shared the so-called convictions promulgated in periodicals (he never read trash of that kind) about the respect due to the personality of every man, about the meaninglessness of marriage, and so forth, but because all decent men do so and he was a decent, though fallen, man.
He took a cigar. But his host awkwardly picked up a whole handful and offered them to him.
‘Just see how good these are. Take them!’
Serpukhovskóy pushed aside the hand with the cigars, and a gleam of offence and shame showed itself in his eyes.
‘Thank you!’ he took out his cigar-case. ‘Try mine!’
The hostess was sensitive. She noticed his embarrassment and hastened to talk to him.
‘I am very fond of cigars. I should smoke myself if everyone about me did not smoke.’
And she smiled her pretty, kindly smile. He smiled in return, but irresolutely. Two of his teeth were missing.
‘No, take this!’ the tactless host continued. ‘The others are weaker. Fritz, bringen Sie noch einen Kasten,’ he said, ‘dort zwei.’1
The German footman brought another box.
‘Do you prefer big ones? Strong ones? These are very good. Take them all!’ he continued, forcing them on his guest.
He was evidently glad to have someone to boast to of the rare things he possessed, and he noticed nothing amiss. Serpukhovskóy lit his cigar and hastened to resume the conversation they had begun.
‘So, how much did you pay for Atlásny?’ he asked.
‘He cost me a great deal, not less than five thousand, but at any rate I am already safe on him. What colts he gets, I tell you!’
‘Do they trot?’ asked Serpukhovskóy.
‘They trot well! His colt took three prizes this year: in Túla, in Moscow, and in Petersburg; he raced Voékov’s Raven. That rascal, the driver, let him make four false steps or he’d have left the other behind the flag.’
‘He’s a bit green. Too much Dutch blood in him, that’s what I say,’ remarked Serpukhovskóy.
‘Well, but what about the mares? I’ll show Goody to you to-morrow. I gave three thousand for her. For Amiable I gave two thousand.’
And the host again began to enumerate his possessions. The hostess saw that this hurt Serpukhovskóy and that he was only pretending to listen.
‘Will you have some more tea?’ she asked.
‘I won’t,’ replied the host and went on talking. She rose, the host stopped her, embraced her, and kissed her.
As he looked at them Serpukhovskóy for their sakes tried to force a smile, but after the host had got up, embraced her, and led her to the portière, Serpukhovskóy’s face suddenly changed. He sighed heavily, and a look of despair showed itself on his flabby face. Even malevolence appeared on it.
The host returned and smilingly sat down opposite him. They were silent awhile.
XI
‘YES, you were saying you bought him of Voékov,’ remarked Serpukhovskóy with assumed carelessness.
‘Oh yes, that was of Atlásny, you know. I always meant to buy some mares of Dubovítzki, but he had nothing but rubbish left.’
‘He has failed …’ said Serpukhovskóy, and suddenly stopped and glanced round. He remembered that he owed that bankrupt twenty thousand rubles, and if it came to talking of being bankrupt it was certainly said that he was one. He laughed.
Both again sat silent for a long time. The host considered what he could brag about to his guest. Serpukhovskóy was thinking what he could say to show that he did not consider himself bankrupt. But the minds of both worked with difficulty, in spite of efforts to brace themselves up with cigars. ‘When are we going to have a drink?’ thought Serpukhovskóy. ‘I must certainly have a drink or I shall die of ennui with this fellow,’ thought the host.
‘Will you be remaining here long?’ Serpukhovskóy asked.
‘Another month. Well, shall we have supper, eh? Fritz, is it ready?’
They went into the dining-room. There under a hanging lamp stood a table on which were candles and all sorts of extraordinary things: syphons, and little dolls fastened to corks, rare wine in decanters, unusual hors-d’œuvres and vodka. They had a drink, ate a little, drank again, ate again, and their conversation got into swing. Serpukhovskóy was flushed and began to speak without timidity.
They spoke of women and of who kept this one or that, a gipsy, a ballet-girl, or a Frenchwoman.
‘And have you given up Mathieu?’ asked the host. (That was the woman who had ruined Serpukhovskóy.)
‘No, she left me. Ah, my dear fellow, when I recall what I have got through in my life! Now I am really glad when I have a thousand rubles, and am glad to get away from everybody. I can’t stand it in Moscow. But what’s the good of talking!’
The host found it tiresome to listen to Serpukhovskóy. He wanted to speak about himself— to brag. But Serpukhovskóy also wished to talk about himself, about his brilliant past. His host filled his glass for him and waited for him to stop, so that he might tell him about himself and how his stud was now arranged as no one had ever had a stud arranged before. And that his Marie loved him with her heart and not merely for his wealth.
‘I wanted to tell you that in my stud …’ he began, but Serpukhovskóy interrupted him.
‘I may say that there was a time,’ Serpukhovskóy began, ‘when I liked to live well and knew how to do it. Now you talk about trotting – tell me which is your fastest horse.’
The host, glad of an opportunity to tell more about his stud, was beginning, when Serpukhovskóy again interrupted him.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘but you breeders do it just out of vanity and not for pleasure, not for the joy of life. It was different with me. You know I told you I had a driving-horse, a piebald with just the same kind of spots as the one your keeper was riding. Oh, what a horse that was! You can’t possibly know: it was in 1842, when I had just come to Moscow; I went to a horse-dealer and there I saw a well-bred piebald gelding. I liked him. The price? One thousand rubles. I liked him, so I took him and began to drive with him. I never had, and you have not and never will have, such a horse. I never knew one like him for speed and for strength. You were a boy then and couldn’t have known, but you may have heard of him. All Moscow was talking about him.’
‘Yes, I heard of him,’ the host unwillingly replied. ‘But what I wished to say about mine …’
‘Ah, then you did hear! I bought him just as he was, without his pedigree and without a certificate; it was only afterwards that I got to know Voékov and found out. He was a colt by Affable I. Strider – because of his long strides. On account of his piebald spots he was removed from the Khrénov stud and given to the head keeper, who had him castrated and sold him to a horse-dealer. There are no such horses now, my dear chap. Ah, those were days! Ah, vanished youth!’ – and he sang the words of the gipsy song. He was getting tipsy. – ‘Ah, those were good times. I was twenty-five and had eighty thousand rubles a year, not a single grey hair, and all my teeth like pearls.… Whatever I touched succeeded, and now it is all ended …’
‘But there was not the same mettlesomeness then,’ said the host, availing himself of the pause. ‘Let me te
ll you that my first horses began to trot without …’
‘Your horses! But they used to be more mettlesome …’
‘How – more mettlesome?’
‘Yes, more mettlesome! I remember as if it were to-day how I drove him once to the trotting races in Moscow. No horse of mine was running. I did not care for trotters, mine were thoroughbreds: General Chaulet, Mahomet. I drove up with my piebald. My driver was a fine fellow, I was fond of him, but he also took to drink.… Well, so I got there.
‘ “Serpukhovskóy,” I was asked, “when are you going to keep trotters?” “The devil take your lubbers!” I replied. “I have a piebald hack that can outpace all your trotters!” “Oh no, he won’t!” “I’ll bet a thousand rubles!” Agreed, and they started. He came in five seconds ahead and I won the thousand rubles. But what of it? I did a hundred versts2 in three hours with a troyka of thoroughbreds. All Moscow knows it.’
And Serpukhovskóy began to brag so glibly and continuously that his host could not get a single word in and sat opposite him with a dejected countenance, filling up his own and his guest’s glass every now and then by way of distraction.
The dawn was breaking and still they sat there. It became intolerably dull for the host. He got up.
‘If we are to go to bed, let’s go!’ said Serpukhovskóy rising, and reeling and puffing he went to the room prepared for him.
The host was lying beside his mistress.
‘No, he is unendurable,’ he said. ‘He gets drunk and swaggers incessantly.’
‘And makes up to me.’
‘I’m afraid he’ll be asking for money.’
Serpukhovskóy was lying on the bed in his clothes, breathing heavily.
‘I must have been lying a lot,’ he thought. ‘Well, no matter! The wine was good, but he is an awful swine. There’s something cheap about him. And I’m an awful swine,’ he said to himself and laughed aloud. ‘First I used to keep women, and now I’m kept. Yes, the Winkler girl will support me. I take money of her. Serves him right. Still, I must undress. Can’t get my boots off. Hullo! Hullo!’ he called out, but the man who had been told off to wait on him had long since gone to bed.
He sat down, took off his coat and waistcoat and somehow managed to kick off his trousers, but for a long time could not get his boots off— his soft stomach being in the way. He got one off at last, and struggled for a long time with the other, panting and becoming exhausted. And so with his foot in the boot-top he rolled over and began to snore, filling the room with a smell of tobacco, wine, and disagreeable old age.
XII
IF Strider recalled anything that night, he was distracted by Váska, who threw a rug over him, galloped off on him, and kept him standing till morning at the door of a tavern, near a peasant horse. They licked one another. In the morning when Strider returned to the herd he kept rubbing himself.
‘Something itches dreadfully,’ he thought.
Five days passed. They called in a veterinary, who said cheerfully:
‘It’s the itch, let me sell him to the gipsies.’
‘What’s the use? Cut his throat, and get it done to-day.’
The morning was calm and clear. The herd went to pasture, but Strider was left behind. A strange man came – thin, dark, and dirty, in a coat splashed with something black. It was the knacker. Without looking at Strider he took him by the halter they had put on him and led him away. Strider went quietly without looking round, dragging along as usual and catching his hind feet in the straw.
When they were out of the gate he strained towards the well, but the knacker jerked his halter, saying: ‘Not worth while.’
The knacker and Váska, who followed behind, went to a hollow behind the brick barn and stopped as if there were something peculiar about this very ordinary place. The knacker, handing the halter to Váska, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and produced a knife and a whetstone from his boot-leg. The gelding stretched towards the halter meaning to chew it a little from dullness, but he could not reach it. He sighed and closed his eyes. His nether lip hung down, disclosing his worn yellow teeth, and he began to drowse to the sound of the sharpening of the knife. Only his swollen, aching, outstretched leg kept jerking. Suddenly he felt himself being taken by the lower jaw and his head lifted. He opened his eyes. There were two dogs in front of him; one was sniffing at the knacker, the other was sitting and watching the gelding as if expecting something from him. The gelding looked at them and began to rub his jaw against the arm that was holding him.
‘Want to doctor me probably – well, let them!’ he thought.
And in fact he felt that something had been done to his throat. It hurt, and he shuddered and gave a kick with one foot, but restrained himself and waited for what would follow.… Then he felt something liquid streaming down his neck and chest. He heaved a profound sigh and felt much better.
The whole burden of his life was eased.
He closed his eyes and began to droop his head. No one was holding it. Then his legs quivered and his whole body swayed. He was not so much frightened as surprised.
Everything was so new to him. He was surprised, and started forward and upward, but instead of this, in moving from the spot his legs got entangled, he began to fall sideways, and trying to take a step fell forward and down on his left side.
The knacker waited till the convulsions had ceased; drove away the dogs that had crept nearer, took the gelding by the legs, turned him on his back, told Váska to hold a leg, and began to skin the horse.
‘It was a horse, too,’ remarked Váska.
‘If he had been better fed the skin would have been fine,’ said the knacker.
The herd returned down hill in the evening, and those on the left saw down below something red, round which dogs were busy and above which hawks and crows were flying. One of the dogs, pressing its paws against the carcass and swinging his head, with a crackling sound tore off what it had seized hold of. The chestnut filly stopped, stretched out her head and neck, and sniffed the air for a long time. They could hardly drive her away.
At dawn, in a ravine of the old forest, down in an overgrown glade, big-headed wolf cubs were howling joyfully. There were five of them: four almost alike and one little one with a head bigger than his body. A lean old wolf who was shedding her coat, dragging her full belly with its hanging dugs along the ground, came out of the bushes and sat down in front of the cubs. The cubs came and stood round her in a semicircle. She went up to the smallest, and bending her knee and holding her muzzle down, made some convulsive movements, and opening her large sharp-toothed jaws disgorged a large piece of horseflesh. The bigger cubs rushed towards her, but she moved threateningly at them and let the little one have it all. The little one, growling as if in anger, pulled the horseflesh under him and began to gorge. In the same way the mother wolf coughed up a piece for the second, the third, and all five of them, and then lay down in front of them to rest.
A week later only a large skull and two shoulder-blades lay behind the barn, the rest had all been taken away. In summer a peasant, collecting bones, carried away these shoulder-blades and skull and put them to use.
The dead body of Serpukhovskóy, which had walked about the earth eating and drinking, was put under ground much later. Neither his skin, nor his flesh, nor his bones, were of any use.
Just as for the last twenty years his body that had walked the earth had been a great burden to everybody, so the putting away of that body was again an additional trouble to people. He had not been wanted by anybody for a long time and had only been a burden, yet the dead who bury their dead found it necessary to clothe that swollen body, which at once began to decompose, in a good uniform and good boots and put it into a new and expensive coffin with new tassels at its four corners, and then to place that coffin in another coffin of lead, to take it to Moscow and there dig up some long buried human bones, and to hide in that particular spot this decomposing maggotty body in its new uniform and polished boots, and cover it all
up with earth.
1 ‘Bring another box. There are two there.’
2 A little over sixty-six miles.
THE PORCELAIN DOLL
(A FRAGMENT)
A LETTER written six months after his marriage by Leo Tolstoy to his wife’s younger sister, the Natásha of War and Peace.
The first few lines are in his wife’s handwriting, the rest in his own.
21st March 1863.
Why, Tánya, have you dried up?… You don’t write to me at all and I so love receiving letters from you, and you have not yet replied to Lëvochka’s [Tolstoy’s] crazy epistle, of which I did not understand a word.
23rd March.
There, she began to write and suddenly stopped, because she could not continue. And do you know why, Tánya dear? A strange thing has befallen her and a still stranger thing has befallen me. As you know, like the rest of us she has always been made of flesh and blood, with all the advantages and disadvantages of that condition: she breathed, was warm and sometimes hot, blew her nose (and how loud!) and so on, and above all she had control of her limbs, which – both arms and legs – could assume different positions: in a word she was corporeal like all of us. Suddenly on March 21st 1863, at ten o’clock in the evening, this extraordinary thing befell her and me. Tánya! I know you always loved her (I do not know what feeling she will arouse in you now); I know you felt a sympathetic interest in me, and I know your reasonableness, your sane view of the important affairs of life, and your love of your parents (please prepare them and inform them of this event), and so I write to tell you just how it happened.
I got up early that day and walked and rode a great deal. We lunched and dined together and had been reading (she was still able to read) and I felt tranquil and happy. At ten o’clock I said goodnight to Auntie1 (Sónya was then still as usual and said she would follow me) and I went off to bed. Through my sleep I heard her open the door and heard her breathe as she undressed.… I heard how she came out from behind the screen and approached the bed. I opened my eyes … and saw – not the Sónya you and I have known – but a porcelain Sónya! Made of that very porcelain about which your parents had a dispute. You know those porcelain dolls with bare cold shoulders, and necks and arms bent forward, but made of the same lump of porcelain as the body. They have black painted hair arranged in large waves, the paint of which gets rubbed off at the top, and protruding porcelain eyes that are too wide and are also painted black at the corners, and the stiff porcelain folds of their skirts are made of the same one piece of porcelain as the rest. And Sónya was like that! I touched her arm – she was smooth, pleasant to feel, and cold porcelain. I thought I was asleep and gave myself a shake, but she remained like that and stood before me immovable. I said: Are you porcelain? And without opening her mouth (which remained as it was, with curved lips painted bright red) she replied: Yes, I am porcelain. A shiver ran down my back. I looked at her legs: they also were porcelain and (you can imagine my horror) fixed on a porcelain stand, made of one piece with herself, representing the ground and painted green to depict grass. By her left leg, a little above and at the back of the knee, there was a porcelain column, coloured brown and probably representing the stump of a tree. This too was in one piece with her. I understood that without this stump she could not remain erect, and I became very sad, as you who loved her can imagine. I still did not believe my senses and began to call her. She could not move without that stump and its base, and only rocked a little – together with the base – to fall in my direction. I heard how the porcelain base knocked against the floor. I touched her again, and she was all smooth, pleasant, and cold porcelain. I tried to lift her hand, but could not. I tried to pass a finger, or even a nail, between her elbow and her side – but it was impossible. The obstacle was the same porcelain mass, such as is made at Auerbach’s, and of which sauce-boats are made. She was planned for external appearance only. I began to examine her chemise; it was all of one piece with the body, above and below. I looked more closely, and noticed that at the bottom a bit of the fold of her chemise was broken off and it showed brown. At the top of her head it showed white where the paint had come off a little. The paint had also come off a lip in one place, and a bit was chipped off one shoulder. But it was all so well made and so natural that it was still our same Sonya. And the chemise was one I knew, with lace, and there was a knot of black hair behind, but of porcelain, and the fine slender hands, and large eyes, and the lips – all were the same, but of porcelain. And the dimple in her chin and the small bones in front of her shoulders, were there too, but of porcelain. I was in a terrible state and did not know what to say or do or think. She would have been glad to help me, but what could a porcelain creature do? The half-closed eyes, the eyelashes and eyebrows, were all like her living self when looked at from a distance. She did not look at me, but past me at her bed. She evidently wanted to lie down, and rocked on her pedestal all the time. I quite lost control of myself, seized her, and tried to take her to her bed. My fingers made no impression on her cold porcelain body, and what surprised me yet more was that she had become as light as an empty flask. And suddenly she seemed to shrink, and became quite small, smaller than the palm of my hand, although she still looked just the same. I seized a pillow, put her in a corner of it, pressed down another corner with my fist, and placed her there, then I took her nightcap, folded it in four, and covered her up to the head with it. She lay there still just the same. Then I extinguished the candle and placed her under my beard. Suddenly I heard her voice from the corner of the pillow: ‘Lëva, why have I become porcelain?’ I did not know what to reply. She said again: ‘Does it make any difference that I am porcelain?’ I did not want to grieve her, and said that it did not matter. I felt her again in the dark – she was still as before, cold and porcelain. And her stomach was the same as when she was alive, protruding upwards – rather unnatural for a porcelain doll. Then I experienced a strange feeling. I suddenly felt it pleasant that she should be as she was, and ceased to feel surprised – it all seemed natural. I took her out, passed her from one hand to the other, and tucked her under my head. She liked it all. We fell asleep. In the morning I got up and went out without looking at her. All that had happened the day before seemed so terrible. When I returned for lunch she had again become such as she always was. I did not remind her of what had happened the day before, fearing to grieve her and Auntie. I have not yet told anyone but you about it. I thought it had all passed off, but all these days, every time we are alone together, the same thing happens. She suddenly becomes small and porcelain. In the presence of others she is just as she used to be. She is not oppressed by this, nor am I. Strange as it may seem, I frankly confess that I am glad of it, and though she is porcelain we are very happy.