Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Novels and Novellas. Leo Tolstoy

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      “Please whip me!” I cried, sobbing. “Please hurt me the more and more, for I am a wretched, bad, miserable boy!”

      “Why, what on earth is the matter with you?” he said, giving me a slight push from him.

      “No, I will not go away!” I continued, seizing his coat. “Every one else hates me — I know that, but do YOU listen to me and protect me, or else send me away altogether. I cannot live with HIM. He tries to humiliate me — he tells me to kneel before him, and wants to strike me. I can’t stand it. I’m not a baby. I can’t stand it — I shall die, I shall kill myself. HE told Grandmamma that I was naughty, and now she is ill — she will die through me. It is all his fault. Please let me — W-why should-he-tor-ment me?”

      The tears choked my further speech. I sat down on the sofa, and, with my head buried on Papa’s knees, sobbed until I thought I should die of grief.

      “Come, come! Why are you such a water-pump?” said Papa compassionately, as he stooped over me.

      “He is such a bully! He is murdering me! I shall die! Nobody loves me at all!” I gasped almost inaudibly, and went into convulsions.

      Papa lifted me up, and carried me to my bedroom, where I fell asleep.

      When I awoke it was late. Only a solitary candle burned in the room, while beside the bed there were seated Mimi, Lubotshka, and our doctor. In their faces I could discern anxiety for my health, so, although I felt so well after my twelve-hours’ sleep that I could have got up directly, I thought it best to let them continue thinking that I was unwell.

Chapter 17 — Hatred

      Yes, it was the real feeling of hatred that was mine now — not the hatred of which one reads in novels, and in the existence of which I do not believe — the hatred which finds satisfaction in doing harm to a fellow-creature, but the hatred which consists of an unconquerable aversion to a person who may be wholly deserving of your esteem, yet whose very hair, neck, walk, voice, limbs, movements, and everything else are disgusting to you, while all the while an incomprehensible force attracts you towards him, and compels you to follow his slightest acts with anxious attention.

      This was the feeling which I cherished for St. Jerome, who had lived with us now for a year and a half.

      Judging coolly of the man at this time of day, I find that he was a true Frenchman, but a Frenchman in the better acceptation of the term. He was fairly well educated, and fulfilled his duties to us conscientiously, but he had the peculiar features of fickle egotism, boastfulness, impertinence, and ignorant self-assurance which are common to all his countrymen, as well as entirely opposed to the Russian character,

      All this set me against him, Grandmamma had signified to him her dislike for corporal punishment, and therefore he dared not beat us, but he frequently THREATENED us, particularly myself, with the cane, and would utter the word fouetter as though it were fouatter in an expressive and detestable way which always gave me the idea that to whip me would afford him the greatest possible satisfaction.

      I was not in the least afraid of the bodily pain, for I had never experienced it. It was the mere idea that he could beat me that threw me into such paroxysms of wrath and despair.

      True, Karl Ivanitch sometimes (in moments of exasperation) had recourse to a ruler or to his braces, but that I can look back upon without anger. Even if he had struck me at the time of which I am now speaking (namely, when I was fourteen years old), I should have submitted quietly to the correction, for I loved him, and had known him all my life, and looked upon him as a member of our family, but St. Jerome was a conceited, opinionated fellow for whom I felt merely the unwilling respect which I entertained for all persons older than myself. Karl Ivanitch was a comical old “Uncle” whom I loved with my whole heart, but who, according to my childish conception of social distinctions, ranked below us, whereas St. Jerome was a well-educated, handsome young dandy who was for showing himself the equal of any one.

      Karl Ivanitch had always scolded and punished us coolly, as though he thought it a necessary, but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome, on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never said anything beyond, “What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!” or “You boys are as irritating as Spanish fly!” (which he always called “Spaniard” fly). St. Jerome, however, had names for us like “mauvais sujet,” “villain,” “garnement,” and so forth — epithets which greatly offended my self-respect. When Karl Ivanitch ordered us to kneel in the corner with our faces to the wall, the punishment consisted merely in the bodily discomfort of the position, whereas St. Jerome, in such cases, always assumed a haughty air, made a grandiose gesture with his hand, and exclaiming in a pseudo-tragic tone, “À genoux, mauvais sujet!” ordered us to kneel with our faces towards him, and to crave his pardon. His punishment consisted in humiliation.

      However, on the present occasion the punishment never came, nor was the matter ever referred to again. Yet, I could not forget all that I had gone through — the shame, the fear, and the hatred of those two days. From that time forth, St. Jerome appeared to give me up in despair, and took no further trouble with me, yet I could not bring myself to treat him with indifference. Every time that our eyes met I felt that my look expressed only too plainly my dislike, and, though I tried hard to assume a careless air, he seemed to divine my hypocrisy, until I was forced to blush and turn away.

      In short, it was a terrible trial to me to have anything to do with him.

Chapter 18 — The Maidservants’ Room

      I began to feel more and more lonely, until my chief solace lay in solitary reflection and observation. Of the favourite subject of my reflections I shall speak in the next chapter. The scene where I indulged in them was, for preference, the maidservants’ room, where a plot suitable for a novel was in progress — a plot which touched and engrossed me to the highest degree. The heroine of the romance was, of course, Masha. She was in love with Basil, who had known her before she had become a servant in our house, and who had promised to marry her some day. Unfortunately, fate, which had separated them five years ago, and afterwards reunited them in Grandmamma’s abode, next proceeded to interpose an obstacle between them in the shape of Masha’s uncle, our man Nicola, who would not hear of his niece marrying that “uneducated and unbearable fellow,” as he called Basil. One effect of the obstacle had been to make the otherwise slightly cool and indifferent Basil fall as passionately in love with Masha as it is possible for a man to be who is only a servant and a tailor, wears a red shirt, and has his hair pomaded. Although his methods of expressing his affection were odd (for instance, whenever he met Masha he always endeavoured to inflict upon her some bodily pain, either by pinching her, giving her a slap with his open hand, or squeezing her so hard that she could scarcely breathe), that affection was sincere enough, and he proved it by the fact that, from the moment when Nicola refused him his niece’s hand, his grief led him to drinking, and to frequenting taverns, until he proved so unruly that more than once he had to be sent to undergo a humiliating chastisement at the police-station.

      Nevertheless, these faults of his and their consequences only served to elevate him in Masha’s eyes, and to increase her love for him. Whenever he was in the hands of the police, she would sit crying the whole day, and complain to Gasha of her hard fate (Gasha played an active part in the affairs of these unfortunate lovers). Then, regardless of her uncle’s anger and blows, she would stealthily make her way to the police-station, there to visit and СКАЧАТЬ