The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Childhood/Chapter 28
XXVIII.
The Last Sad Memories
Mamma was no more, but our life ran in the usual routine; we went to bed and rose at the same hours, and in the same rooms. Morning and evening, tea, dinner, supper, — everything was at the customary hours. The tables and chairs stood in the same places. Nothing in the house nor in our manner of life had changed, — only she was no more —
It seemed to me that after such a misfortune everything ought to change. Our usual manner of life appeared to me as an insult to her memory, and too vividly reminded me of her absence.
On the day before the funeral, after dinner, I was sleepy, and I went to the room of Natálya Sávishna, intending to lie down on her soft feather bed, under her warm quilt. When I entered, Natálya Sávishna was lying on her bed, and no doubt was sleeping. When she heard the sound of my footsteps, she raised herself, threw back the woollen kerchief with which her head was covered to protect it against flies, and, fixing her cap, seated herself on the edge of her bed.
As it used to happen frequently that after dinner I came to rest in her room, she guessed the cause of my coming, and said to me, rising from her bed:
"You have come to rest yourself, my little dove? Lie down!"
"Don't say that, Natálya Sávishna!" I said, holding her back by her hand. "I did not come for that — I just came so — and you are tired: you had better lie down yourself."
"No, my dear one, I have slept enough," she said to me (I knew she had not slept for three days), "And this is no time for sleeping," she added, with a deep sigh.
I wanted to have a talk with Natálya Sávishna about our misfortune. I knew her loyalty and love, and so it would have been a consolation for me to weep with her.
"Natálya Sávishna," I said, after a moment's silence, and seating myself on the bed, "did you expect this?"
The old woman looked at me in perplexity and with curiosity, as if she did not quite understand why I asked her that.
"Who could have expected this?" I repeated,
"Oh, my dear one," she said, casting a look of the tenderest compassion upon me, "I not only did not expect it, but I can't even think of it. It has long been time for me, an old woman, to put my old bones to rest; for see what I have lived to go through: I have buried the old master, your grandfather, — may his memory be eternal, — Prince Nikoláy Mikháylovich, two brothers, sister Annushka, and they were all younger than I, my dear one, and now I have to outlive her, no doubt for my sins. His holy will be done! He has taken her because she was worthy, and He needs good people even there."
This simple thought gave me consolation, and I moved up to Natálya Sávishna. She crossed her arms over her breast, and looked up to the ceiling; her moist, sunken eyes expressed a great, but calm, sorrow. She was firmly convinced that God would not separate her long from her upon whom all the power of her love had been centred for so many years,
"Yes, my dear one, it does not seem long since I was swathing and watching her, and she called me Násha. She used to run up to me, and embrace me with her tiny arms, and kiss me, and say:
"'Náshik mine, beauty mine, darling mine,' And I, joking her, would say:
"'It is not so, motherkin, you do not love me! Just let you grow up, and you will marry, and will forget your Násha.' And she would fall to musing: 'No,' she'd say, 'I had better not marry, if I can't take Násha with me. I will never abandon Násha.' And there! she has abandoned me, she did not wait my time. And she did love me; but, to tell the truth, whom did she not love? Yes, my dear one, you must not forget your mother; she was not human, but an angel of heaven. When her soul will be in the heavenly kingdom, she will love you there, too, and she will rejoice in you there."
"Why do you say, Natálya Sávishna, when she will be in the heavenly kingdom?" asked I. "I think she must be there now."
"No, my dear one," said Natálya Sávishna, dropping her head, and seating herself nearer to me on the bed, "now her soul is here."
And she pointed upwards. She spoke almost in a whisper, and with such feeling and conviction that I involuntarily raised my eyes, and, looking at the moulding, tried to find something there.
"Before the soul of a righteous person goes to heaven, it has to pass through forty ordeals, my dear one, for forty days, and may still be in her house — "
She long spoke in the same strain, and she spoke with simplicity and conviction, as if she were telling the commonest things which she had seen herself, and in regard to which no one could have the slightest doubts. I listened to her, with bated breath, and though I did not understand well what she was telling me, I believed her fully.
"Yes, my dear one, now she is here, is looking at you, and, maybe, hearing what we are saying," concluded Natálya Sávishna.
And, lowering her head, she grew silent. She needed a handkerchief to wipe off her falling tears. She rose, looked straight into my face, and said in a voice quivering with emotion:
"The Lord has moved me up several steps by this experience. What is left for me here? For whom am I to live, whom am I to love?"
“Do you not love us?” I said, with reproach, and with difficulty restraining my tears.
"God knows how I love you, my little doves, but I have never loved, nor can love, any one as I have loved her."
She could not speak any longer, turned away from me, and sobbed out loud.
I did not think of sleeping after that. We sat silent, facing each other, and wept.
Fóka entered the room. Noticing our condition, and evidently not wishing to disturb us, be looked about silently and timidly, and stopped at the door.
"What is it, Fókasha?" asked Natálya Sávishna, wiping her tears with her handkerchief.
"A pound and a half of raisins, four pounds of sugar, and three pounds of rice for the kutyá."[1]
"Right away, right away, my friend," said Natálya Sávishna. She hurriedly took a pinch of snuff, and with rapid steps went to one of the coffers. The last traces of the sorrow which had been produced by our conversation disappeared the moment she had a duty to perform which she regarded as very important.
"Why four pounds?" she grumbled, as she fetched the sugar and weighed it out on the steelyard. "Three pounds and a half will be enough."
And she took a few pieces off the scale.
"And what kind of a business is this? Yesterday I let you have eight pounds of rice, and now you are asking again for some. You may do as you please, Fóka, but I will not give you any rice. That Vánka is glad there is a disturbance in the house, and so he thinks that, perhaps, I shall not notice it. No, I will not be indulgent when it comes to the master's property. Who has ever heard such a thing? Eight pounds!"
"What is to be done? He says it has all been used up."
"Well, here it is, take it! Let him have it!"
I was struck by that transition from the touching emotion with which she had been speaking to me, to grumbling and petty considerations. When I reflected over it at a later time, I understood that, in spite of what was going on in her soul, she had sufficient presence of mind to do her work, and the power of habit drew her to her ordinary occupations. The sorrow had affected her so powerfully, that she did not find it necessary to conceal the fact that she was able to attend to other matters; she would have found it difficult to understand how such a thought could come to one.
Vanity is a sentiment that is incompatible with true sorrow, and yet that sentiment is so firmly inoculated in the nature of man that the deepest sorrow rarely expels it. Vanity in sorrow is expressed by the desire to appear bereaved, or unhappy, or firm. And these low desires, to which we do not own up, but which do not abandon us, not even in the deepest grief, deprive it of power, dignity, and sincerity. But Natálya Sávishna was so deeply struck by her misfortune that in her soul not a wish was left, and she lived only from habit.
After having supplied Fóka with the desired provisions, and reminded him of the cake which was to be made for the entertainment of the clergy, she dismissed him, took up a stocking, and again sat down by my side.
Our conversation reverted to the same subject, and we once more began to weep, and to wipe off our tears.
The conversations with Natálya Sávishna were repeated every day. Her quiet tears and gentle, pious speeches afforded me consolation and relief.
But soon we were separated; three days after the funeral we moved with our whole household to Moscow, and it was my fate never to see her again.
Grandmother received the terrible news only upon our arrival, and her grief was very great. We were not admitted to her, because she was unconscious for a whole week; the doctors were afraid for her life, the more so since she not only would not take any medicine, but did not even speak to any one, nor sleep, nor take any food. At times, while she was sitting all alone in her room, she suddenly burst out laughing, then sobbed without tears, went into convulsions, and shouted meaningless and terrible words in a preternatural voice. This was the first great sorrow which had struck her down, and it brought her to despair. She felt she must accuse somebody of her misfortune, and she uttered fearful threats, exhibiting meanwhile unusual bodily strength, jumped up from her chair, walked across the room with long, rapid steps, and then fell down unconscious.
I once walked into her room: she sat, as usual, in her chair, and was, apparently, calm; but her glance appalled me. Her eyes were wide open, but her vision was indefinite and dull: she looked straight at me, and in all probability did not see me. Her lips slowly began to smile, and she spoke in a touching and tender voice: "Come to me, my dear, come to me, my angel!" I thought she was speaking to me, so I walked up to her, but she was not looking at me. "Ah, if you knew, my treasure, how I have suffered, and how happy I am now that you have arrived." I understood that she imagined she saw mamma, and I stopped. "And they told me that you were no more," she continued, frowning. "What nonsense! You can't die before me!" and she laughed out with a terrible, hysterical laughter.
Only people who are capable of strong affection can experience deep sorrow; but this very necessity of loving serves for them as a counteraction of their sorrow, and cures it. For this reason the moral nature of man is even more tenacious than his physical nature. Sorrow never kills.
A week later grandmother was able to weep, and she grew better. Her first thought, after she regained consciousness, was of us, and her love for us was increased. We did not leave her chair; she wept softly, spoke of mamma, and tenderly petted us.
It would never have occurred to a person who saw grandmother's bereavement, that she exaggerated it, though the expression of that sorrow was vehement and touching; but somehow I sympathized more with Natálya Sávishna, and I am convinced, even now, that nobody loved mamma so sincerely and purely, or grieved for her so much as did that simple-hearted and loving creature.
With my mother's death the happy period of my life was over, and a new epoch, that of my boyhood, began; but since the memories of Natálya Sávishna, whom I never saw again, and who had had such a strong and helpful influence upon the direction and development of my sentiments, belong to the first epoch, I shall say a few words about her and her death.
After our departure, as our people who remained in the village later told me, she felt very lonely for want of work. Although all the coffers were still in her keeping, and she did not cease rummaging through them, transposing, hanging things up, and spreading them out, she missed the noise and bustle of the country residence when it is inhabited by its masters, to which she had been accustomed from her childhood. The bereavement, the changed manner of life, and the absence of petty cares soon developed in her an ailment of old age for which she had a natural predisposition. Precisely a year after mother's death, she developed dropsy, and took to her bed.
I think it was hard for Natálya Sávishna to live alone, and harder still to die alone, in the large Petróvskoe house, without relatives, without friends. Everybody in the house loved and respected her, but she had no friendship for anybody, and she prided herself on the fact. She surmised that in her capacity of stewardess, where she enjoyed the confidence of her masters and had so many coffers with all kinds of property in her charge, her friendship for anybody would necessarily lead to hypocrisy and criminal condescension. For this reason, or, perhaps, because she had nothing in common with the other servants, she kept aloof from all and maintained that in the house she had no kith nor kin, and that she would show no indulgence in matters pertaining to her master's property.
She sought and found consolation in confiding her feelings to God in fervent prayers; but at times, during moments of weakness, to which we all are subject, when the best consolation is afforded man by the tears and sympathies of living beings, she lifted upon her bed her lapdog, who, fixing her yellow eyes upon her, licked her hands; Natálya Sávishna spoke to her and, weeping softly, stroked her. When her lapdog began pitifully to whimper, she tried to quiet her, and said: "Now stop, I know without you that I shall die soon."
A month before her death she took some white calico, white muslin, and rose-coloured ribbons out of her coffer: with the aid of her servant-girl she sewed a white dress and a cap for herself, and made the minutest arrangements for everything that would be needed for her funeral. She also went through the coffers of her master, and transferred everything, with the greatest precision, according to an invoice, to the wife of the business steward; then she took out two silk dresses and an ancient shawl, which had been given her at one time by grandmother, and grandfather's military uniform, with golden trappings, which had also been given into her full possession. Thanks to her care, the seams and the lace of the uniform were still fresh, and the cloth had not been touched by moths. Before her death she expressed her wish that one of the dresses — the rose-coloured one — should be given to Volódya for a dressing-gown or smoking-jacket, the other, — puce in checks, — to me, for similar use, and the shawl to Lyúbochka. The uniform she bequeathed to whichever of us became an officer first. The rest of her property and money, except forty roubles which she laid aside for her burial and mass, she left to her brother. Her brother, who had long ago been emancipated, was living in some distant Government, and leading a most riotous life, so she had no relations with him during her lifetime.
When Natálya Sávishna's brother appeared to get his inheritance, and the whole property of the deceased woman amounted only to twenty-five roubles, he was unwilling to believe it, and declared it was impossible that an old woman, who had lived for sixty years in a rich house, who had had everything in her hands, and all her life lived parsimoniously and quarrelled about every rag, should have left nothing. But it was really so.
Natálya Sávishna suffered two months from her disease, and bore her sufferings with truly Christian patience; she did not grumble, did not complain, but only, as was her custom, continually invoked God. An hour before death, she confessed with quiet joy, and received the holy sacrament and extreme unction.
She begged forgiveness of the inmates of the house for offences which she might have caused them, and asked her confessor, Father Vasíli, to transmit to us that she did not know how to thank us for our kindnesses, and that she asked us to forgive her, if through her stupidity she had offended any one, but that "I have never been a thief, and have never so much as filched a thread from my masters." This was the one quality for which she valued herself.
Having donned the gown which she had prepared, and a cap, and resting on her pillows, she continued talking to the priest to the very last. She happened to think that she had left nothing for the poor, so she took out ten roubles, and asked him to distribute them among the poor of his parish; then she made the sign of the cross, lay down, and drew her last sigh, pronouncing the name of God with a joyful smile.
She left life without regret, was not afraid of death, and accepted it as a boon. This is often said, but how rarely does it happen in reality! Natálya Sávishna could well afford to be without fear of death, for she died with her faith unshaken, and fulfilling the law of the gospel. All her life was a pure, unselfish love and self-sacrifice.
What if her belief might have been more elevated, and her life directed to higher purposes, — was her pure soul on that account less worthy of love and admiration?
She executed the best and highest act of this life, — she died without regrets or fear.
She was buried, according to her own wish, not far from the chapel which was built over mother’s grave. The mound under which she lies, and which is overgrown with nettles and agrimony, is surrounded by a black picket-fence, and I never fail to go from the chapel to this fence and to make a low obeisance.
At times I stop in silence between the chapel and the black fence. In my soul again arise gloomy recollections, and I think: Has Providence connected me with these two beings only that I may eternally regret them?
- ↑ Rice-cake used in the church during the reading of the mass for the dead.