The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 26
XXVI.
"At next to the last station, after the conductor had come to collect tickets, I picked up my things and went out on the brake platform, and the consciousness of the near solution only increased my agitation. I felt cold, and my jaws began to tremble so that my teeth chattered. I mechanically left the depot with the crowd, took a cab, seated myself in it, and drove off. I rode, looking at the few pedestrians and the janitors and the shadows cast by the lamps and by my vehicle, now in front, and now back of me, not thinking of anything. Having ridden about half a verst, my feet grew cold, and I recalled that I had taken off my woollen stockings in the car and had put them into the carpet-bag. 'Where is the carpet-bag,—here? Yes, it is. And the wicker trunk?' I recalled that I had entirely forgotten about the luggage, but finding that I had a receipt, I decided that it was not worth while to go back for it, and so I continued on my way.
"No matter how much I try to recall now, I am absolutely unable to remember what my condition at that time was: I know nothing of what I thought or wished. I only remember having been conscious that something terrible and very important for my life was in store for me. I do not know whether this important thing happened to me because I thought of it, or because I had a presentiment of it. It may also be that after what happened all the previous moments received in my recollection a sombre shade. I drove up to the entrance. It was one o'clock. Several cabmen were standing near the entrance, expecting passengers from the lighted win(the windows that were lighted were those of the parlour and drawing-room of my apartment). Without rendering myself any account of why there was a light in our windows so late at night, I, in the same mood of expectation of something terrible, ascended the staircase and rang the bell. Egór, a good, careful, and most stupid lackey, opened the door. The first thing my eyes fell upon was an overcoat hanging with other clothes on the rack of the antechamber. I ought to have been surprised, but I was not, because I expected it. 'That's it,' I said to myself. When I asked Egór who was there and he named Trukhachévski, I asked whether there was anybody else. He said, 'Nobody, sir.' I remember how he told me this with an intonation as if to give me pleasure and dispel my doubts as to the presence of anybody else. 'Yes, yes,' I seemed to be saying to myself. 'And the children?'—'Thank God, they are well. They have been asleep for quite awhile, sir.'
"I could not draw breath nor stop my jaws from shaking. 'So, I see, it is not as I had thought: formerly I used to expect a misfortune, but everything was as of old. Now everything is not as of old; here is everything I have been imagining,—everything I thought I only imagined has now actually happened. Here it is all.—'
"I came very near sobbing out, but the devil immediately whispered to me: 'You weep and become sentimental, and they will quietly part from each other, there will be no proofs, and you will all your life be in doubt and torment.' Directly my sentimentality disappeared, and there arose a strange feeling of joy because now my torment will come to an end, because I could punish her and get rid of her, because I could give free play to my rage. I did give free play to my rage,—I became a beast, an evil, cunning beast. 'Don't, don't,' I said to Egór, who wanted to go to the drawing-room. 'Do this: take a cab at once and go to the station; here is the receipt,—get the luggage. Go!' He went along the corridor for his overcoat. Fearing lest he might scare them up, I went with him as far as his room and waited until he was dressed.
"In the drawing-room, beyond another room, was heard conversation and the sound of knives and plates. They were eating and had not heard the bell. 'If only it may turn out I am wrong!' I thought. Egór put on his Astrakhan fur overcoat and went out. I let him out and locked the door after him; I felt uneasy when I felt that I was left alone, and that I must act at once. I did not yet know how. I only knew that now everything was ended, that there could be no doubts in regard to her guilt, and that I would immediately punish her and break all my relations with her.
"Before this time I wavered and said to myself, 'Maybe this is not true, maybe I am mistaken,' but now there was nothing of that. Everything was irrevocably decided upon. Secretly from me, all alone with him in the night! This is a complete oblivion of everything! Or worse still: there is purposely such boldness and impudence in the crime in order that this boldness may serve as a token of innocence. Everything is clear,—no doubt is possible. I was afraid of this one thing that they would run away and concoct some new deception, thus depriving me of the palpable evidence and possibility of proof; therefore, in order to catch them at once, I went on tiptoe to the parlour, where they were sitting, not through the drawing-room, but through the corridor and the children's rooms.
"In the first room the boys were sleeping. In the second, the nurse moved and was about to awaken. Imagining what she would think if she found out everything, such a pity for myself overcame me at the thought that I was unable to repress tears and, in order not to wake the children, I ran on tiptoe into the corridor and into my cabinet, where I flung myself down on the divan and burst out into sobs.
"'I am an honest man, I am the son of my parents, I have all my life dreamt of the happiness of domestic life; I am a man who has never betrayed her— Here are five children, and she embraces a musician because he has red lips!
"'No, she is not a human being! She is a bitch, an abominable bitch! In the next room to her children, whom she has been pretending to love all her life. And to write to me what she did! So impudently to hang about his neck! How do I know but that it has been so all the time? Maybe the lackeys begot all the children whom I regard as my own!
"'I should have arrived on the morrow, and she, in her coiffure, with her waist and her indolent, graceful motions (I saw all her attractive, hateful face), would have met me, and the beast of jealousy would have for ever remained in my heart and would have lacerated it. What will the nurse think?— Egór— And poor Líza! She understands a little now. And that impudence! That lie! And that animal sensuality, which I know so well!' I said to myself.
"I wanted to get up, but I could not. My heart was beating so much that I could not stand on my feet. 'Yes, I shall die of apoplexy. She will kill me. That is what she wants. She wants to kill me! No, that would be too advantageous for her, and I will not afford her that pleasure. Here I am sitting, and they are eating and laughing there, and— Yes, although she is no longer in her first youth, he has not disdained her: she is not bad-looking, but, chiefly, she is safe for his precious health. Why did I not choke her then?' I said to myself, recalling the moment when, the week before, I drove her out of the cabinet and then hurled things at her. I vividly recalled the condition in which I then was; I not only recalled it, but experienced the same necessity of beating and destroying which I experienced then. I remember how I wanted to act and how all other considerations than those which were necessary for action had taken flight from my mind. I entered into that condition of the beast or of a man under the influence of physical excitement in time of danger, when a man acts precisely, leisurely, but, at the same time, without losing a minute and with one definite purpose in view.
"The first thing I did was to take off my boots and, remaining in my socks, to walk over to the wall above the divan, where guns and daggers were hanging, and to take down a sharp Damascus dagger which had never been used and which was very sharp. I took it out of the scabbard. The scabbard, I remember, I threw behind the divan, and I remember saying to myself, 'I must find it later, or else it will be lost.' Then I took off my overcoat, which I had kept on all the time, and, stepping softly in my socks, I went there.