The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 12
XII.
"In our world the very opposite takes place: if a man thought of continence while unmarried, he considers such continence unnecessary the moment he has married. These solitary journeys after the wedding, which the young people take with their parents' consent, what are they but a license to commit debauchery? But a moral law, being violated, demands its own punishment.
"No matter how much I tried to arrange the honeymoon for myself, nothing came of it. All the time I only felt an abomination, shame, and dulness. Very soon a painful and oppressive feeling was added to this. It began very soon. I believe on the third or fourth day I found my wife in a dull mood; I began to ask her what the matter was, and embraced her, which, in my opinion, was all she could wish, but she pushed my arm aside and burst out weeping. What about? She could not say. She simply felt sad and oppressed. In all probability her tired nerves told her the truth of the abomination of our relations, but she could not say so. I began to inquire: she said something about being lonely without her mother. It appeared to me that this was not true. I began to speak persuasively to her, without mentioning her mother. I did not understand that she simply was oppressed and that her mother was only an excuse. But she soon felt offended because I did not mention her mother, as though I did not believe her. She told me that she was sure I did not love her. I accused her of caprice, and suddenly her face was completely changed: instead of sadness there was now an expression of irritation, and with the most venomous words she began to upbraid me for my egotism and cruelty.
"I looked at her. Her countenance expressed complete coldness and hostility, almost hatred of me. I remember how frightened I was when I saw this. 'What is this?' I thought. 'Love is the union of souls, and this has come in place of it! This cannot be, that is not she!' I tried to appease her, but I ran up against such an insuperable wall of coldness and venomous hostility that before I had time to look around, the irritation took possession of me, too, and we told each other a mass of unpleasant things. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I called it a quarrel, but it was not a quarrel; it was a manifestation of the abyss which was in reality between us. The infatuation was exhausted by the gratification of sensuality, and we were left in our real relations to each other, that is, two mutually strange egotists, who wished to derive as much pleasure from each other as was possible. I called that a quarrel which had taken place between us; it was not a quarrel,—it was only the result of an interrupted sensuality which laid bare our real relations to each other. I did not understand that this cold and hostile attitude was our normal relation; I did not understand it because the hostile relation was in the beginning soon veiled from us by a new access of fleeting sensuality, that is, by infatuation.
"I thought that we had quarreled and made up, and that it would never happen again. But even during this same honeymoon there again was reached a period of satiety, again we ceased to be useful to each other, and another quarrel took place. The second quarrel impressed me even more than the first. 'It appears that the first quarrel was not an accident, but that it must be so and always will be so,' I thought.
"The second quarrel struck me the more forcibly because it had its rise in an absolutely impossible cause, something about money, which I never grudged, and certainly not to my wife. All I remember is that she gave such a twist to a remark of mine that it turned out to be an expression of my desire to rule over her by means of money, to which, according to her words, I had affirmed my own exclusive right,—at all events, it was something impossible, stupid, mean, and unnatural, of no consequence either to her or to me. I grew irritated, began to upbraid her for her want of delicacy, she did the same, and off it started again. In her words, in the expression of her countenance and her eyes, I saw the same cruel, cold animosity, which had struck me so before. I remember I had quarreled with my brother, my friend, my father, but there had never been between us that venomous malice which arose in this case.
"Some time passed, and this mutual hatred was again veiled under the infatuation, that is, under sensuality, and I consoled myself with the thought that these two quarrels were mistakes that could be mended. But soon there came a third and a fourth quarrel, and I understood that it was not an accident, but that it must be so, that it would be so, and I was horrified at that which awaited me. I was, besides, tormented by the terrible thought that it was I alone who was living with my wife so badly and contrary to all expectation, whereas this does not happen in other cases of matrimony. I did not know then that it was a common fate, and that every one thought, like myself, that it was his exclusive misfortune, that he concealed this exclusive and disgraceful misfortune, not only from everybody else but even from himself, without acknowledging it to himself.
"It had begun in the very first days and it continued all the time, and it grew ever stronger and more pointed. In the depth of my heart I felt from the start that I was lost, that there had happened that which I had not expected, that marriage was not only no happiness, but even something very oppressive; however, like all the rest, I did not wish to acknowledge the fact to myself (I would not have acknowledged it even now were it not for the end), and I concealed it not only from others, but even from myself. Now I wonder how it was that I did not see my real situation. It might have been seen from the very fact that the quarrels began from such causes that later, when they were over, it was difficult to recall what had caused them. Reason had no time to simulate sufficient causes for the constant animosity which subsisted between us. Still more striking was the insufficiency of excuses for making up again. At times there were words, explanations, even tears, but often— Oh, it is horrible to think of it—after the bitterest words uttered toward each other, suddenly there were silent glances, smiles, kisses, embraces— Fie, what abomination! How could I have missed seeing then all the vileness of it?"