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

And suddenly the mother saw⁠—in the private cabinet of a restaurant, brilliantly lit by electricity (her husband had once taken her to such a place), near a table on which were the remains of a supper⁠—a bloated, wrinkled, unpleasant, would-be-young old man with turned-up moustaches. He was sitting on a soft sofa, in which he sank deep, his drunken eyes gazing with desire at a depraved, painted woman with a white bare neck, and with drunken tongue he shouted something, repeating an indecent joke several times, evidently pleased at the approving laughter of another similar pair.

“It is not true, it is not he⁠ ⁠… that is not my Kóstya!” exclaimed the mother in terror, looking at the horrible old man⁠—horrible just because there was something in his glance and about his lips that reminded her of Kóstya’s own peculiarities. “It is well that this is only a dream,” thought she. “There is the real Kóstya⁠ ⁠…” and she saw her white, naked Kóstya, with his plump chest, as he sat in his bath, laughing and kicking; and she not only saw, but felt, how he suddenly seized her arm, bared to the elbow, and kissed it and kissed it, and at last bit it⁠—not knowing what else to do with that arm so dear to him.

“Yes, this⁠—and not that horrid old man⁠—is Kóstya,” she said to herself. And thereupon she awoke, and came back with terror to the reality from which there was no awaking.

She went to the nursery. The nurse had already washed and laid out Kóstya’s body. He lay on something raised; his little nose was waxen and sharp, and sunk at the nostrils, and his hair was smoothed back from his brow. Around him candles were burning, and on a small table at his head stood hyacinths⁠—white lilac and pink.

The nurse rose from her chair and, lifting her brows and pouting her lips, looked at the upturned, stonily rigid face. Molly entered at the door opposite, with her simple good-natured face and tear-stained eyes.

“Why, she told me one should not grieve, but she has herself been crying,” thought the mother. Then she turned her gaze to the dead. For a moment she was startled and repelled by the dreadful likeness the dead face bore to that of the old man she had seen in her dream; but she drove away that thought, and, crossing herself, touched with her warm lips the small cold waxen forehead. Then she kissed the crossed rigid little hands; and suddenly the scent of the hyacinths told her, as it were afresh, that he was gone and would return no more; and she was stifled by sobs, and again kissed him on the forehead, and wept for the first time. She wept, but not with despair; her tears were resigned and tender. She suffered, but no longer rebelled or complained; and she knew that what had happened had to be, and was therefore good.

“It is a sin to weep, dear lady,” said the nurse; and, going up to the little corpse, with a folded handkerchief she wiped away the tears the mother had left on Kóstya’s waxen forehead.

“Tears will sadden his little soul! It is well with him now.⁠ ⁠… He is a sinless angel. Had he lived, who knows what might have become of him?”

“Yes, yes!⁠ ⁠… But, still, it hurts, it hurts!” said the mother.

1905.

Kornéy Vasílyef was fifty-four when he had last visited his village. There was no grey to be seen in his thick curly hair, and his black beard was only a little grizzly at the cheekbones. His face was smooth and ruddy, the nape of his neck broad and firm, and his whole strong body padded with fat as a result of town life and good fare.

He had finished army service twenty years ago, and had returned to the village with a little money. He first began shopkeeping, and then took to cattle-dealing. He went to Tcherkásy, in the province of Kiev, for his “goods”⁠—that is, cattle⁠—and drove them to Moscow.

In his iron-roofed brick house in the village of Gáyi lived his old mother, his wife and two children (a girl and a boy), and also his orphan nephew⁠—a dumb lad of fifteen⁠—and a labourer.

Kornéy had married twice. His first wife was a weak, sickly woman who died without having any children; and he, a middle-aged widower, had married a strong, handsome girl, the daughter of a poor widow from a neighbouring village. His children were by this second wife.

Kornéy had sold his last lot of cattle so profitably in Moscow that he had about three thousand roubles;309 and having learnt from a fellow-countryman that near their village a ruined landowner’s forest was for sale at a bargain, he thought he would go in for the timber trade also. He knew the business, for before serving in the army he had been assistant clerk to a timber merchant, and had managed a wood.

At the railway-station nearest to Gáyi, Kornéy met a fellow-villager, “one-eyed Kouzmá.” Kouzmá came from Gáyi with his pair of poor shaggy horses to meet every train, seeking for fares. Kouzmá was poor, and therefore disliked all rich folk, and especially Kornéy, of whom he spoke contemptuously.

Kornéy, in his cloth coat and sheepskin, came out of the station and stood in the porch, portmanteau in hand, a portly figure, puffing and looking about him. It was a calm, grey, slightly frosty morning.

“What, haven’t you got a fare, Daddy Kouzmá?” he asked. “Will you take me?”

“Yes, for a rouble I will.”

“Seventy kopecks is plenty.”

“There, now! He’s stuffed his own paunch, but wants to squeeze thirty kopecks out of a poor man!”

“Well, all right, then⁠ ⁠… drive up!” said Kornéy.

And, placing his portmanteau and bundle in the small sledge, he sat down, filling the whole of the back seat. Kouzmá remained on the box in front.

“All right, drive on.”

They drove across the ruts near the station and reached the