The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 19
XIX.
He suddenly got up and sat down near the window.
"Pardon me," he said, and, staring through the window, sat thus for about three minutes in silence. Then he drew a deep breath and again seated himself opposite me. His face was quite changed, his eyes looked wretched, and what might be taken for a strange smile wrinkled his lips. "I am a little tired, but I will continue. There is much time yet,—day has not broken yet. Yes, sir," he began, after lighting a cigarette, "she grew plump as soon as she stopped having children, and her disease,—her eternal suffering on account of the children, began to pass away; it did not pass away exactly; rather, she seemed to awaken as if from an intoxication, she came to her senses, and saw that there was a whole God's world with its joys, which she had forgotten, but in which she did not know how to live,—a God's world, which she did not at all understand. 'I must not miss the chance! Time will pass, and it will never return!' Thus, I imagine, she reasoned, or rather felt, nor could she help reasoning and feeling like this: she had been educated to consider nothing more worthy of attention in the world than love. She had married, had tasted a little of that love, but nowhere near that which she had promised herself, which she had expected, and there had been so many disenchantments, so much suffering, and that unexpected torment,—so many children! This torment had worn her out. And now, thanks to obliging doctors, she had discovered that it was possible to get along without children.
"She was happy and conscious of it, and again bloomed forth for that one thing she knew, for love. But love for her husband, who had defiled himself by jealousy and malice of every kind, was no longer for her. She began to dream of another, a pure, new love,—at least I thought so about her. And she began to look around, as though expecting something. I saw it and could not help worrying. It came to be a usual occurrence for her to speak to me, even as she had done before, through a third person, that is, to speak to strangers while really addressing me, and, without thinking that but an hour before she had said the very opposite, to say boldly and half in earnest that maternal love was a deception, that it was not worth while to sacrifice life for the children's sake, that there was youth, and that life ought to be enjoyed. She busied herself less with the children, and not with such abandonment as before, but she was ever more concerned about herself and her exterior, even though she concealed this, and about her pleasures, and even about perfecting herself. She again took with enthusiasm to the piano, which had been entirely given up. This was the beginning of it all."
He again turned to the window with strained eyes, but, evidently making an effort over himself, he immediately continued:
"Yes, that man made his appearance—" He hesitated and once or twice emitted his strange nasal sounds.
I saw that it was painful for him to name that man, to recall him, to speak of him. But he made an effort, and, as if overcoming the impediment which was in his way, continued with determination:
"He was a worthless man, to my thinking, so far as I could judge him, not on account of the significance which he received in my life, but because he really was such. The fact that he was of no account only serves as a proof of how little amenable to reason she was. If not he, it would have been another,—but it had to happen—" He again grew silent. Yes, he was a musician, a violin player,—not a professional musician, but a semi-professional, a semi-society man.
"His father is a landed proprietor, a neighbour of my father's. His father had lost his fortune, and his children—there were three boys—had got up in the world; only this youngest one had been taken to his godmother in Paris. There he was sent to the Conservatory, because he had talent for music, and he graduated from it as a violin player, taking part in concerts. This man was—" Apparently he was about to say something uncomplimentary of him, but he restrained himself and rapidly said, "Well, I do not know the kind of life he led; all I know is that he made his appearance that year in Russia and that he appeared at my house—
"Almond-shaped, moist eyes; red, smiling lips; pomaded moustache; the latest fashionable hair-dress; a common, handsome face, what women call not at all bad; of a weak, though not misshapen figure, with unusually well-developed hips, as with women, and such as, they say, Hottentots have. They, too, are musical. Forward to the point of familiarity, so far as possible, but sensitive and ever ready to stop at the least repulse, with the preservation of external dignity, and with that peculiarly Parisian shade of his button shoes and brightly coloured ties and all that which strangers acquire in Paris and which, on account of its novelty, always affects women. In his manners an artificial, external cheerfulness,—that manner, you know, of saying everything by hints and snatches, as though you knew and remembered it all, and were able to supplement it yourself.
"He, with his music, was the cause of everything. At the trial the case was presented as being the result of jealousy. Not at all, that is, it was not at all the reason of it, though it had something to do with it. At the trial it was decided that I was a deceived husband and that I had killed her, while defending my honour (that is what they call it). And so they acquitted me. At the trial I endeavoured to explain things, but they understood me as wishing to rehabilitate my wife's honour.
"Her relations with the musician, whatever they may have been, have no meaning for me, nor for her either. But what has a meaning is that which I have told you about, that is, my swinishness. Everything happened because there was between us that terrible abyss of which I have told you, that terrible tension of mutual hatred, when the first cause was sufficient to produce a crisis. Our quarrels became toward the end something terrible, and were very startling, alternating with tense animal passion.
"If he had not appeared, another man would have. If there had not been the excuse of jealousy, there would have been something else. I insist that all men who live as I did must either take to debauch, or separate, or kill themselves, or their wives, just as I did. If this has not happened with them, it must be taken as an extremely rare exception. Even I have been, before ending as I did, several times on the brink of suicide, and she, too, had several times almost poisoned herself.