The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Childhood/Chapter 27
XXVII.
Grief
The next day, late in the evening, I wanted to take another look at her: overcoming an involuntary feeling of terror, I softly opened the door, and walked into the parlour on tiptoe.
In the middle of the room stood the coffin on a table; around it were burning candles in tall silver candlesticks; in the distant corner sat the sexton, and in a monotonous voice read the psalter.
I stopped at the door and began to look, but my eyes were so red with tears, and my nerves were so unstrung, that I could not make out anything. Everything was strangely running together: the light, the brocade, the velvet, the tall candlesticks, the rose-coloured lace-bordered pillow, the crown, the cap with its ribbons, and something translucent, of a wax-colour. I stood on a chair, in order to see her face; but I imagined I saw in the place where it ought to have been the same pale yellow, translucent object. I could not believe that it was her face. I began to look more closely at it, and by degrees recognized the familiar features which were so dear to me. I shuddered from terror, when I convinced myself that it was she. But why were her closed eyes so sunken? Why this terrible pallor, and the black spot under the transparent skin on one of her cheeks? Why was the expression of her whole face so severe and cold? Why were her lips so pale, and their position so beautiful, so majestic, and expressing such an unearthly calm that a cold chill passed over my back and hair, as I looked at her?
I looked, and felt that a certain incomprehensible, irresistible power was attracting my eyes to that lifeless face. I riveted my gaze upon it, and my imagination painted for me pictures abloom with life and happiness. I forgot that the dead body, which was lying before me and at which I was looking meaninglessly, as at an object which had nothing in common with my memories, was she. I imagined her now in one, now in another situation: alive, merry, smiling; then I was suddenly struck by some feature in her pale face, upon which my eyes were resting; I recalled the terrible reality, and shuddered, but did not cease looking at it. And again dreams took the place of reality, and again the consciousness of reality destroyed my dreams. Finally my imagination grew tired, it no longer deceived me. The consciousness of reality also disappeared, and I completely forgot myself. I do not know how long I remained in that condition, and I do not know what it really was; I know only that I lost, for some time, the consciousness of my whole existence, and experienced some elevated, inexpressibly pleasant and sad sensation.
Maybe, as she was flying away to a better world, her beautiful soul looked back in sorrow at the one in which she left us. She noticed my sadness, took pity on me, and upon pinions of love, with a heavenly smile of sympathy, winged her way to earth, in order to console and bless me.
The door creaked, and another sexton entered the room to take the place of the first. That noise woke me, and the first thought that came to me was that inasmuch as I was not weeping, and was standing upon the chair in an attitude which had in it nothing of a touching nature, the sexton might take me for an unfeeling boy, who had climbed upon the chair out of discomfort or curiosity; I made the sign of the cross, bowed, and fell to weeping.
As I now recall my impressions, I find that only that minute of self-forgetfulness was a real grief. Before and after the funeral, I did not stop weeping, and was sad, but I am ashamed to think of that sadness, because it was always mingled with some selfish feeling. Now it was the desire to show that I was grieved more than the rest, now the anxiety about the effect I was producing on the others, now an aimless curiosity, which caused me to make observations on Mimi's bonnet, and the faces of the people present. I hated myself because I did not experience exclusively a sentiment of sorrow, and endeavoured to conceal all the other feelings; for this reason my grief was not sincere nor natural. Besides, I experienced a certain pleasure from the knowledge that I was unhappy, and tried to awaken the consciousness of misfortune, and this egoistical feeling more than any other drowned my real sorrow in me.
Having slept soundly and calmly through the night, as is always the case after great bereavement, I awoke with dried eyes and soothed nerves. At ten o'clock we were called to the mass which was celebrated before the funeral. The room was filled with servants and peasants, who, all of them in tears, had come to bid their mistress farewell. During the service I wept decently, made the signs of the cross, and bowed to the ground, but I did not pray with sincerity, and was sufficiently indifferent; I was concerned about the new half-dress coat which they had put on me, and which was tight under my arms; I was thinking how to keep from soiling my pantaloons at the knees, and stealthily made observations upon all the people present. Father stood at the head of the coffin, was as pale as a sheet, and with evident difficulty restrained his tears. His tall stature in the black dress coat, his pale, expressive countenance, and his usual graceful and confident movements, whenever he made the sign of the cross, bowed, reaching the floor with his hand, took the candle out of the priest's hands, or walked up to the coffin, were exceedingly effective; but I do not know why, I did not like his being able to produce such an effect at that particular moment.
Mimi was leaning against the wall and, it seemed, barely could stand on her feet; her dress was crushed and full of feathers, and her cap was on one side; her swollen eyes were red, her head was shaking; she sobbed without interruption in a heartrending voice, and continually covered her face with a handkerchief and with her hands. It seemed to me that she did so, in order to hide her face from the spectators, when resting a moment from her simulated sobs. I recalled how the day before she told father that mamma's death was a terrible blow to her, from which she never expected to recover, that she had lost everything in mother, that this angel (so she called mamma) had not forgotten her before her death, and had expressed her desire of safeguarding her future and that of Kátenka. She shed bitter tears, while telling this, and it may be that the feeling of sorrow was genuine, but it was not pure and exclusive. Lyúbochka, in a black dress, with mourning ruffles all wet with tears, drooped her head, and looked now and then at the coffin. Her face expressed childish terror. Kátenka stood near her mother and, in spite of her drawn face, was as rosy as usual. Volódya's open nature was also open in its grief; he either stood lost in thought, his immovable look directed to some object, or his mouth suddenly began to twitch, and he hurriedly made the signs of the cross and bowed. All the outsiders who attended the funeral were unbearable to me. The consoling words which they spoke to father — that she would be better there, that she was not for this world — provoked a certain anger in me.
What right did they have to speak of and weep for her? Some of them, speaking of us, called us orphans. As if we did not know ourselves that children who had no mother were called by that name! They seemed to take delight in being the first to name us so, just as people are in a hurry to call a newly married girl Madame.
In the farther corner of the parlour, almost hidden behind the open door of the buffet, knelt the bent, gray-haired old woman. Folding her hands and raising them to heaven, she did not weep, but prayed. Her soul went out to God, and she asked Him to unite her with the mistress whom she had loved more than any one in the world, and she was firmly convinced that this would soon happen.
"Here is one who has loved her sincerely!" thought I, and I was ashamed of myself.
The mass was over; the face of the deceased one was uncovered, and all persons present, except us, went up to the coffin, one after another, and made their obeisance.
One of the last to walk up to take leave of mother was a peasant woman, with a pretty five-year-old girl in her arms, whom, God knows why, she had brought with her. Just then I accidentally dropped my wet handkerchief, and I was on the point of lifting it up. The moment I bent down, I was struck by a terrible, penetrating cry, which was filled with such terror that if I were to live a hundred years I shall not forget it, and whenever I think of it, a cold chill passes over my body. I raised my head: on a tabouret, near the coffin, stood the same peasant woman, with difficulty restraining the girl in her arms, who fought with her little hands, and, throwing back her terrified face and fixing her bulging eyes upon the countenance of the dead woman, shrieked in a terrible, preternatural voice. I cried out in a voice which, I think, was even more terrible than the one that had struck me, and ran out of the room.
Only then I understood what the strong and heavy odour came from, which filled the room, mingling with the odour of incense; and the thought that the face which only a few days before was beaming with beauty and gentleness, the face of her I loved more than anything else in the world, could evoke terror, for the first time, it seemed, opened the bitter truth to me, and filled my soul with despair.