Resurrection
Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy strong
animal I that he looked upon as himself.
And all this terrible change had come about because he had ceased to
believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done
because it was too difficult to live believing one’s self; believing
one’s self, one had to decide every question not in favour of one’s own
animal life, which is always seeking for easy gratifications, but almost
in every case against it. Believing others there was nothing to decide;
everything had been decided already, and decided always in favour of the
animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his
own self he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around
him; believing others he had their approval. So, when Nekhludoff had
talked of the serious matters of life, of God, truth, riches, and
poverty, all round him thought it out of place and even rather funny,
and his mother and aunts called him, with kindly irony, notre cher
philosophe. But when he read novels, told improper anecdotes, went
to see funny vaudevilles in the French theatre and gaily repeated the
jokes, everybody admired and encouraged him. When he considered it
right to limit his needs, wore an old overcoat, took no wine, everybody
thought it strange and looked upon it as a kind of showing off; but
when he spent large sums on hunting, or on furnishing a peculiar and
luxurious study for himself, everybody admired his taste and gave him
expensive presents to encourage his hobby. While he kept pure and meant
to remain so till he married his friends prayed for his health, and even
his mother was not grieved but rather pleased when she found out that
he had become a real man and had gained over some French woman from his
friend. (As to the episode with Katusha, the princess could not without
horror think that he might possibly have married her.) In the same way,
when Nekhludoff came of age, and gave the small estate he had inherited
from his father to the peasants because he considered the holding
of private property in land wrong, this step filled his mother and
relations with dismay and served as an excuse for making fun of him to
all his relatives. He was continually told that these peasants, after
they had received the land, got no richer, but, on the contrary, poorer,
having opened three public-houses and left off doing any work. But when
Nekhludoff entered the Guards and spent and gambled away so much with
his aristocratic companions that Elena Ivanovna, his mother, had to draw
on her capital, she was hardly pained, considering it quite natural
and even good that wild oats should be sown at an early age and in good
company, as her son was doing. At first Nekhludoff struggled, but all
that he had considered good while he had faith in himself was considered
bad by others, and what he had considered evil was looked upon as good
by those among whom he lived, and the struggle grew too hard. And at
last Nekhludoff gave in, i.e., left off believing himself and began
believing others. At first this giving up of faith in himself was
unpleasant, but it did not long continue to be so. At that time he
acquired the habit of smoking, and drinking wine, and soon got over this
unpleasant feeling and even felt great relief.
Nekhludoff, with his passionate nature, gave himself thoroughly to the
new way of life so approved of by all those around, and he entirely
stifled the inner voice which demanded something different. This began
after he moved to St. Petersburg, and reached its highest point when he
entered the army.
Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of
complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful work; frees them of their
common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional ones to
the honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving
them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into
conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.
But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service with its
honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and murder, there is
added the depraving influence of riches and nearness to and intercourse
with members of the Imperial family, as is the case in the chosen
regiment of the Guards in which all the officers are rich and of good
family, then this depraving influence creates in the men who succumb
to it a perfect mania of selfishness. And this mania of selfishness
attacked Nekhludoff from the moment he entered the army and began living
in the way his companions lived. He had no occupation whatever except
to dress in a uniform, splendidly made and well brushed by other people,
and, with arms also made and cleaned and handed to him by others, ride
to reviews on a fine horse which had been bred, broken in and fed by
others. There, with other men like himself, he had to wave a sword,
shoot off guns, and teach others to do the same. He had no other work,
and the highly-placed persons, young and old, the Tsar and those near
him, not only sanctioned his occupation but praised and thanked him for
it.
After this was done, it was thought important to eat, and particularly
to drink, in officers’ clubs or the salons of the best restaurants,
squandering large sums of money, which came from some invisible source;
then theatres, ballets, women, then again riding on horseback, waving
of swords and shooting, and again the squandering of money, the wine,
cards, and women. This kind of life acts on military men even more
depravingly than on others, because if any other than a military man
lead such a life he cannot help being ashamed of it in the depth of his
heart. A military man is, on the contrary, proud of a life of this kind
especially at war time, and Nekhludoff had entered the army just after
war with the Turks had been declared. “We are prepared to sacrifice
our lives at the wars, and therefore a gay, reckless life is not only
pardonable, but absolutely necessary for us, and so we lead it.”
Such were Nekhludoff’s confused thoughts at this period of his
existence, and he felt all the time the delight of being free of the
moral barriers he had formerly set himself. And the state he lived in
was that of a chronic mania of selfishness. He was in this state when,
after three years’ absence, he came again to visit his aunts.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
Nekhludoff went to visit his aunts because their estate lay near the
road he had to travel in order to join his regiment, which had gone
forward, because they had very warmly asked him to come, and especially
because he wanted to see Katusha. Perhaps in his heart he had already
formed those evil designs against Katusha which his now uncontrolled
animal self suggested to him, but he did not acknowledge this as his
intention, but only wished to go back to the spot where he had been so
happy, to see his rather funny, but dear, kind-hearted old aunts, who
always, without his noticing it, surrounded him with an atmosphere of
love and admiration, and to see sweet Katusha, of whom he had retained
so pleasant a memory.
He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set
in. It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and
was feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always
at that time. “Is she still with them?” he thought, as he drove into the
familiar, old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall, and
now filled with snow off the roofs.
He expected she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she
did not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had
evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was
not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his
apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch.
His aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk
dress on and a cap on her head. Both aunts had been to church and had
received communion.
“Well, this is nice of you to come,” said Sophia Ivanovna, kissing him.
“Mary is not well, got tired in church; we have been to communion.”
“I congratulate you, Aunt Sophia,” [it is usual in Russia to
congratulate those who have received communion] said Nekhludoff, kissing
Sophia Ivanovna’s hand. “Oh, I beg your pardon, I have made you wet.”
“Go to your room--why you are soaking wet. Dear me, you have got
moustaches! . . . Katusha! Katusha! Get him some coffee; be quick.”
“Directly,” came the sound of a well-known, pleasant voice from the
passage, and Nekhludoff’s heart cried out “She’s here!” and it was as if
the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
Nekhludoff, followed by Tikhon, went gaily to his old room to change his
things. He felt inclined to ask Tikhon about Katusha; how she was,
what she was doing, was she not going to be married? But Tikhon was so
respectful and at the same time so severe, insisted so firmly on pouring
the water out of the jug for him, that Nekhludoff could not make up
his mind to ask him about Katusha, but only inquired about Tikhon’s
grandsons, about the old so-called “brother’s” horse, and about the
dog Polkan. All were alive except Polkan, who had gone mad the summer
before.
When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress again,
Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at the door.
Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one but she walked and
knocked like that.
Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the door.
“Come in.” It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than before. The
slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the same old way. Now
as then, she had on a white apron. She brought him from his aunts
a piece of scented soap, with the wrapper just taken off, and two
towels--one a long Russian embroidered one, the other a bath towel. The
unused soap with the stamped inscription, the towels, and her own self,
all were equally clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible
smile of joy at the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as
of old.
“How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?” she uttered with difficulty, her
face suffused with a rosy blush.
“Good-morning! How do you do?” he said, also blushing. “Alive and well?”
“Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and
towels from your aunts,” she said, putting the soap on the table and
hanging the towels over the back of a chair.
“There is everything here,” said Tikhon, defending the visitor’s
independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff’s open dressing case filled
with brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles with silver lids
and all sorts of toilet appliances.
“Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here,” said Nekhludoff,
his heart filling with light and tenderness as of old.
She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The aunts, who
had always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time more warmly than
ever. Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded or killed,
and this touched the old aunts. Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a
day and night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to
stay over Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom
he was to have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his
aunts’ instead.
As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff’s old feelings toward her
awoke again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white apron without
getting excited; he could not listen to her steps, her voice, her laugh,
without a feeling of joy; he could not look at her eyes, black as sloes,