Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

stood quietly by, with a look that seemed to say: “You think it wonderful, but we have long been familiar with it.” The balalaika-player appeared tired; he looked lazily round, struck a false chord, and suddenly knocked on the case with his knuckles, and the dance came to an end.

“Eh, Alyósha,” he said to the dancer, pointing at Doútlof, “there’s your godfather!”

“Where? You, my dearest friend!” shouted Alyósha, the very recruit whom Doútlof had bought; and staggering forward on his weary legs and holding the bottle of vodka above his head, he moved towards the cart.

“Míshka, a glass!” he cried to the player. “Master⁠ ⁠… you’re my dearest friend. What a pleasure, really!” he shouted, drooping his tipsy head over the cart, and he began to treat the men and women to vodka. The men drank, but the women refused.

“My own friends, what could I present you with?” exclaimed Alyósha, embracing the old woman.

A woman selling eatables was standing among the crowd. Alyósha noticed her, seized her tray, and poured its contents into the cart.

“I’ll pay, no fear, you devil!” he howled tearfully, pulling a purse from his pocket and throwing it to Míshka. He stood leaning with his elbows on the cart, and looking with moist eyes at those who sat inside.

“Which is the mother⁠ ⁠… you?” he asked. “I’ll make an offering to you too.”

He stood thinking for a moment, then he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a new folded handkerchief, hurriedly took off a towel which was tied round his waist under his coat, and also a red scarf he was wearing round his neck; and, crumpling them all together, shoved them into the old woman’s lap.

“There! I’m sacrificing them to you,” he said in a voice that was growing softer and softer.

“What for?⁠ ⁠… Thank you, sonny! Just see what a simple lad it is!” said the old woman, addressing Doútlof, who had come up to their cart.

Alyósha was quite quiet, quite stupefied, and looked as if he were falling asleep. He drooped his head lower and lower.

“It’s for you I am going, for you I am perishing⁠ ⁠…” he muttered; “that’s why I am giving you presents.”

“I dare say he, too, has a mother,” said someone in the crowd. “What a simple fellow! It’s awful!”

Alyósha lifted his head. “I have a mother,” said he; “I have a father. All have given me up.⁠ ⁠… Listen to me, you old one,” he went on, taking the old woman’s hand. “I have offered you gifts.⁠ ⁠… Listen to me for Christ’s sake! Go to the village of Vódnoye, ask for the old woman Níkonovna⁠—the same is my own mother, see? Say to this same old woman, this Níkonovna, the third hut from the end, by a new well⁠ ⁠… Tell her that Alyósha⁠—your son, you see.⁠ ⁠… Eh! you musician! strike up!” he shouted.

And, muttering something, he immediately began dancing again, and hurled the bottle with the remaining vodka to the ground.

Ignát got into the cart, and was about to start.

“Goodbye! May God give you⁠ ⁠…” said the old woman, wrapping her cloak closer round her.

Alyósha suddenly stopped.

“Drive to the devil!” he shouted, clenching his fists. “May your mother!⁠ ⁠…”

“O Lord!” said Elijah’s mother, crossing herself.

Ignát touched the reins, and the carts rattled on again. Alyósha the recruit stood in the middle of the road with clenched fists and with a look of rage on his face, and abused the peasants with all his might.

“What are you stopping for? Go on, devil! cannibal!” he cried. “You’ll not escape my hand!⁠ ⁠… Devil’s clodhoppers!”

At these words his voice broke off, and he fell full length to the ground, just where he stood.

Soon the Doútlofs had driven out into the fields, and, looking round, could no longer see the crowd of recruits. Having gone some four miles at a walking pace, Ignát got off his father’s cart, where the old man lay asleep, and walked beside Elijah.

Together they emptied the bottle they had brought from town. After a while Elijah began a song, the women joined in, and Ignát shouted merrily in tune with the song. A mail-cart drove gaily towards them and passed by at full speed. The driver called lustily to his horses as he came by the merry carts; and the postman turned round and winked at the red-faced men and women who sat jolting inside.

1863.

The Porcelain Doll209

21st March 1863.

Why, Tánya, have you dried up?⁠ ⁠… You don’t write to me at all and I so love receiving letters from you, and you have not yet replied to Lëvochka’s210 crazy epistle, of which I did not understand a word.

23rd March.

There, she began to write and suddenly stopped, because she could not continue. And do you know why, Tánya dear? A strange thing has befallen her and a still stranger thing has befallen me. As you know, like the rest of us she has always been made of flesh and blood, with all the advantages and disadvantages of that condition: she breathed, was warm and sometimes hot, blew her nose (and how loud!) and so on, and above all she had control of her limbs, which⁠—both arms and legs⁠—could assume different positions: in a word she was corporeal like all of us. Suddenly on March 21st 1863, at ten o’clock in the evening, this extraordinary thing befell her and me. Tánya! I know you always loved her (I do not know what feeling she will arouse in you now); I know you felt a sympathetic interest in me, and I know your reasonableness, your sane view of the important affairs of life, and your love of your parents (please prepare them and inform them of this event), and so I write to tell you just how it happened.

I got up early that day and walked and rode a great deal. We lunched and dined together and had been reading (she was still able to read) and I