The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 21
XXI.
"So these were our relations when that man made his appearance. He arrived at Moscow,—his name is Trukhachevski,—and showed up at my house. It was in the morning. I received him. We had once been on 'thou' terms. He manoeuvred between 'thou' and 'you,' trying to stick to 'thou,' but I at once set the pace at 'you,' and he immediately submitted. I did not like him from the start. But, strange to say, a certain strange and fatal power urged me not to repel and remove him, but, on the contrary, to draw him closer to me. There would have been nothing simpler than talking coldly to him and seeing him out without introducing him to my wife. No, I, as it were on purpose, mentioned his playing, and said that I had been told that he had given up the violin. He told me that, on the contrary, he now played more than ever. He recalled what it was I used to play formerly. I told him that I had given up playing, but that my wife played well. A remarkable thing happened! My relations with him on that first day, during the first hour of our meeting, were just such as they could be only after all that has taken place. There was a certain restraint in my relations with him: I noticed every word, every expression, uttered by him or by me, and I ascribed an importance to them.
"I introduced him to my wife. They immediately began to talk about music, and he offered his services to her, to play with her. My wife, as always during this last period, was extremely elegant in appearance, and enticingly and disquietingly beautiful. She apparently took a liking to him from the start. Besides, she was happy to have a chance of playing with a violin, which she liked so much that she used to hire a violinist from the theatre for the purpose, and her face beamed with joy. But, upon looking at me, she at once understood my feeling and so she changed her expression, and there began that game of mutual deception. I smiled a pleasant smile, making it appear that this gave me pleasure. He, glancing at my wife, as all immoral men look at a pretty woman, made it appear that he was interested only in the subject of the conversation, although it did not interest him in the least. She tried to seem indifferent, but my familiar false smile of a jealous man and his lustful glance apparently excited her.
"I noticed that from that first meeting on her eyes were peculiarly sparkling, and, obviously on account of my jealousy, there was established between them something like an electrical current, which provoked in them a similarity of facial expressions and smiles. She blushed and he blushed. She smiled and he smiled. They spoke of music, of Paris, of all kinds of trifles. He arose to leave, and stood, smiling, with his hat on his contracting thigh, looking now at her, and now at me, as though waiting to see what we would do. I remember that particular moment because I might have failed to invite him, and nothing further would have happened. But I looked at him and at her. 'Don't imagine that I am jealous,' I mentally said to her, 'or that I am afraid of you,' I mentally said to him, and I invited him to bring his violin some evening, in order to play with my wife. She looked at me in surprise, flared up, and, as though frightened at something, began to refuse, saying that she did not play well enough. This refusal irritated me even more, and I insisted more urgently.
"I remember the strange feeling with which I looked at the back of his head and at his white neck, which stood out under his black hair, combed in both directions, as he was leaving us with a certain birdlike, hopping motion. I could not help confessing to myself that the presence of this man tormented me. 'It depends on me,' thought I, 'to fix it in such a way that I shall never see him again. But doing so would only be a confession that I am afraid of him. No, I am not afraid of him,—that would be humiliating,' I said to myself. And so I insisted in the antechamber, knowing well that my wife was hearing me, that he should come that same evening with his violin. He promised me he would, and went away.
"In the evening he came with his violin, and they played together. But the playing did not go smoothly,—they did not have the proper music, or if they did have it, my wife could not play it without preparation. I was very fond of music and was in sympathy with their playing, fixing a stand for him and turning the music. They managed to play something, some songs without words, and a sonata by Mozart. He played superbly; he possessed in the highest degree that which is called tone and, besides, a refined, noble taste, which was quite out of keeping with his character.
"He was, naturally, a much better musician than my wife; he helped her and, at the same time, politely praised her play. He bore himself very well. My wife seemed to be interested in nothing but the music, and was very simple and natural. But I, although pretending to be interested in the music, did not cease all the evening to be consumed by jealousy.
"I saw from the very first minute when their eyes met that the animal that was sitting in both of them, notwithstanding all the conditions of position and society, was asking, 'May I?' and answering, 'Oh, yes, certainly.' I saw that he had not at all expected to find in my wife, in a Moscow lady, such an attractive woman, and that he was glad of it. He did not have the least doubt that she was willing. The whole question revolved only on keeping the intolerable husband out of the way. If I myself had been pure, I should not have understood it; but I used to think the same way about women, before I was married, and so I read in his soul as in a book.
"What tormented me more especially was that I had convinced myself that she had no other feeling for me than that of constant irritation, rarely interrupted by the usual sensuality, and that this man, by his external elegance and novelty, but especially by his unquestionably great musical talent, by the proximity due to their play in common, by the influence produced on impressionable natures by music, particularly by the violin,—that this man must of necessity not only be to her liking, but that he, without the least wavering, must vanquish, crush, and twist her, wind her into a rope, make of her anything he pleased. I could not help seeing all this, and I suffered terribly. Yet, in spite of it, or maybe on that very account, some power against my will made me be not only very polite, but even gracious to him. I do not know whether I did so for my wife's sake, or for his, in order to show that I was not afraid of him, or for my own sake, in order to deceive myself,—however it may be, I could not be simple with him from my first relations with him. In order not to surrender myself to my desire of killing him on the spot, I had to be kind to him. I gave him costly wines to drink at supper, went into ecstasies over his playing, spoke with him with an unusually kindly smile, and invited him to dinner for the coming Sunday, when he could again play with my wife. I told him I would call together a few of my acquaintances, lovers of music, to listen to his playing. And thus came the end."
Pózdnyshev in great agitation changed his position and emitted his peculiar sound.
"The presence of this man affected me in a strange manner," he began once more, evidently making an effort to be calm.
"Two or three days later I returned home from some exhibition. I entered the antechamber, and a heavy sensation overcame me: I felt as though a stone had been rolled upon my heart, and I was unable to account for this sensation. There was something which reminded me of him, as I passed through the antechamber. Ouly when I had reached the cabinet did I find an explanation of it, and I returned to the antechamber to verify it. Yes, I was not mistaken: it was his overcoat. (Everything which came in contact with him I noticed very attentively, without being conscious of doing so.) I asked whether he was there, and I found he was. I went to the parlour, not through the drawing-room, but through the children's study. My daughter, Líza, was sitting over a book, and the nurse was with the baby at the table, spinning a lid or something. The door to the parlour was closed, and I there heard an even arpeggio and his voice and hers. I listened, but could not make out what it was.
"'Evidently the sounds of the piano are on purpose to drown their words and kisses,' I thought,—'perhaps.' O Lord, what a storm rose within me! Terror takes possession of me as I think of what animal was then living within me! My heart was compressed and stopped, and then began to beat as with a hammer. The chief feeling, as during every rage, was that of compassion for myself. 'Before the children, before the nurse!' I thought. I must have been terrible, because Líza looked at me with strange eyes. 'What had I better do?' I asked myself. 'Had I better go in? I can't, for God knows what I will do there. Nor can I go away. The nurse is looking at me as though she understood my situation. I must go in,' I said to myself, and rapidly opened the door. He was sitting at the piano and was making these arpeggios with his large, white, arched fingers. She was standing at the corner of the grand over some open music. She was the first to see or hear me, and she glanced at me. I do not know whether she was frightened, or pretended not to be frightened, or really was not frightened, but she did not shudder, nor budge,—she only blushed, and that, too, after some time.
"'How glad I am you have come! We have not yet decided what to play on Sunday,' she said to me in a tone of voice which she would not have employed if we had been alone. This fact and her saying 'we' of herself and of him exasperated me. I silently exchanged greetings with him.
"He pressed my hand and immediately began to explain to me, with a smile which I interpreted as ridicule, that he had brought me some music for the Sunday, and that they could not agree what to play: whether it was to be more difficult and classical music, more especially a sonata by Beethoven with the violin, or some light things. Everything was so natural and simple that it was impossible to find any fault with anything; at the same time I was convinced that it was all an untruth, and that they had come to some kind of an agreement how to deceive me.
"One of the most agonizing situations for a jealous man (in our social life all men are jealous) is caused by certain social conditions under which the greatest and most perilous proximity between man and woman is permitted. One would become a laughing-stock of people, if one were to be set against the close proximity at balls, or the doctors' proximity to their female patients, or the proximity during occupations with art, painting, or more especially with music. A certain proximity is necessary there, and there is nothing prejudicial in this proximity: only a foolish, jealous man can see anything undesirable in it. And yet, everybody knows that the greater part of all cases of adultery in our society are committed by means of such occupations, especially by means of music.
"I evidently confused them by the confusion which was apparent in me: I was for a long time not able to say anything. I was like an upturned bottle, from which the water does not flow, because it is too full. I wanted to call him names, and drive him out, but, instead, I felt that I must again be gracious and pleasant to him. And so I was. I acted as though I approved of everything, submitting to that strange feeling which caused me to treat him with greater kindness in the measure as his presence tormented me. I told him that I depended on his taste, and that I advised her to do likewise. He remained long enough to wear off the unpleasant impression produced by my sudden entrance into the room with a frightened face and by my silence, and went away pretending to have decided what to play on the next day. I was fully convinced that, in comparison with that which interested them, the question what to play was quite a matter of indifference to them.
"I took him to the antechamber with especial politeness. (Why not see off a man who has come in order to break the peace and ruin the happiness of a whole family!) I pressed his white, soft hand with unusual kindness.