The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
And he resumed his old seat.
CHAPTER III.
I resumed mine, also. The lawyer and the lady whispered together. I was
sitting beside Posdnicheff, and I maintained silence. I desired to talk
to him, but I did not know how to begin, and thus an hour passed until
we reached the next station.
There the lawyer and the lady went out, as well as the clerk. We were
left alone, Posdnicheff and I.
“They say it, and they lie, or they do not understand,” said
Posdnicheff.
“Of what are you talking?”
“Why, still the same thing.”
He leaned his elbows upon his knees, and pressed his hands against his
temples.
“Love, marriage, family,—all lies, lies, lies.”
He rose, lowered the lamp-shade, lay down with his elbows on the
cushion, and closed his eyes. He remained thus for a minute.
“Is it disagreeable to you to remain with me, now that you know who I
am?”
“Oh, no.”
“You have no desire to sleep?”
“Not at all.”
“Then do you want me to tell you the story of my life?”
Just then the conductor passed. He followed him with an ill-natured
look, and did not begin until he had gone again. Then during all the
rest of the story he did not stop once. Even the new travellers as they
entered did not stop him.
His face, while he was talking, changed several times so completely
that it bore positively no resemblance to itself as it had appeared
just before. His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and even his beard,
all were new. Each time it was a beautiful and touching physiognomy,
and these transformations were produced suddenly in the penumbra; and
for five minutes it was the same face, that could not be compared to
that of five minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed
again, and became unrecognizable.
CHAPTER IV.
“Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,—yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome.”
He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:—
“To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning.
It must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my
marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman
of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University
pupil, a graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year.
But before talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived
formerly, and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so
many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And
like the majority, while leading the life of a _débauché_, I was
convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.
“The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of
this, I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be
incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought
thus, and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.
“At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying
toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends, and
before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes, I
did not make debauchery the principal object of my life; but I found
pleasure within the limits of society’s rules, and innocently believed
myself a profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations
did not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the
pleasure of the moment.
“In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the fact
that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was
honest. I avoided those women who, by attaching themselves to me, or
presenting me with a child, could bind my future. Moreover, perhaps
there may have been children or attachments; but I so arranged matters
that I could not become aware of them.
“And living thus, I considered myself a perfectly honest man. I did not
understand that debauchery does not consist simply in physical acts,
that no matter what physical ignominy does not yet constitute
debauchery, and that real debauchery consists in freedom from the moral
bonds toward a woman with whom one enters into carnal relations, and I
regarded _this freedom_ as a merit. I remember that I once tortured
myself exceedingly for having forgotten to pay a woman who probably had
given herself to me through love. I only became tranquil again when,
having sent her the money, I had thus shown her that I did not consider
myself as in any way bound to her. Oh, do not shake your head as if you
were in agreement with me (he cried suddenly with vehemence). I know
these tricks. All of you, and you especially, if you are not a rare
exception, have the same ideas that I had then. If you are in agreement
with me, it is now only. Formerly you did not think so. No more did I;
and, if I had been told what I have just told you, that which has
happened would not have happened. However, it is all the same. Excuse
me (he continued): the truth is that it is frightful, frightful,
frightful, this abyss of errors and debaucheries in which we live face
to face with the real question of the rights of woman.” . . .
“What do you mean by the ‘real’ question of the rights of woman?”
“The question of the nature of this special being, organized otherwise
than man, and how this being and man ought to view the wife. . . .”
CHAPTER V.
“Yes: for ten years I lived the most revolting existence, while
dreaming of the noblest love, and even in the name of that love. Yes, I
want to tell you how I killed my wife, and for that I must tell you how
I debauched myself. I killed her before I knew her.
“I killed _the_ wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and
then it was that I killed _my_ wife. Yes, sir: it is only after having
suffered, after having tortured myself, that I have come to understand
the root of things, that I have come to understand my crimes. Thus you
will see where and how began the drama that has led me to misfortune.
“It is necessary to go back to my sixteenth year, when I was still at
school, and my elder brother a first-year student. I had not yet known
women but, like all the unfortunate children of our society, I was
already no longer innocent. I was tortured, as you were, I am sure, and
as are tortured ninety-nine one-hundredths of our boys. I lived in a
frightful dread, I prayed to God, and I prostrated myself.
“I was already perverted in imagination, but the last steps remained to
be taken. I could still escape, when a friend of my brother, a very gay
student, one of those who are called good fellows,—that is, the
greatest of scamps,—and who had taught us to drink and play cards, took
advantage of a night of intoxication to drag us THERE. We started. My
brother, as innocent as I, fell that night, and I, a mere lad of
sixteen, polluted myself and helped to pollute a sister-woman, without
understanding what I did. Never had I heard from my elders that what I
thus did was bad. It is true that there are the ten commandments of the
Bible; but the commandments are made only to be recited before the
priests at examinations, and even then are not as exacting as the
commandments in regard to the use of _ut_ in conditional propositions.
“Thus, from my elders, whose opinion I esteemed, I had never heard that
this was reprehensible. On the contrary, I had heard people whom I
respected say that it was good. I had heard that my struggles and my
sufferings would be appeased after this act. I had heard it and read
it. I had heard from my elders that it was excellent for the health,
and my friends have always seemed to believe that it contained I know
not what merit and valor. So nothing is seen in it but what is
praiseworthy. As for the danger of disease, it is a foreseen danger.
Does not the government guard against it? And even science corrupts
us.”
“How so, science?” I asked.
“Why, the doctors, the pontiffs of science. Who pervert young people by
laying down such rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by devising and
teaching them ways by which not to have children?
“Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were
spent in curing debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to
exist, whereas now all efforts are employed, not in extirpating
debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of the
consequences. Besides, it is not a question of that. It is a question
of this frightful thing that has happened to me, as it happens to
nine-tenths, if not more, not only of the men of our society, but of
all societies, even peasants,—this frightful thing that I had fallen,
and not because I was subjected to the natural seduction of a certain
woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell because the surroundings in
which I found myself saw in this degrading thing only a legitimate
function, useful to the health; because others saw in it simply a
natural amusement, not only excusable, but even innocent in a young
man. I did not understand that it was a fall, and I began to give
myself to those pleasures (partly from desire and partly from
necessity) which I was led to believe were characteristic of my age,
just as I had begun to drink and smoke.
“And yet there was in this first fall something peculiar and touching.
I remember that straightway I was filled with such a profound sadness
that I had a desire to weep, to weep over the loss forever of my
relations with woman. Yes, my relations with woman were lost forever.
Pure relations with women, from that time forward, I could no longer
have. I had become what is called a voluptuary; and to be a voluptuary
is a physical condition like the condition of a victim of the morphine
habit, of a drunkard, and of a smoker.
“Just as the victim of the morphine habit, the drunkard, the smoker, is
no longer a normal man, so the man who has known several women for his
pleasure is no longer normal? He is abnormal forever. He is a
voluptuary. Just as the drunkard and the victim of the morphine habit
may be recognized by their face and manner, so we may recognize a
voluptuary. He may repress himself and struggle, but nevermore will he
enjoy simple, pure, and fraternal relations toward woman. By his way of
glancing at a young woman one may at once recognize a voluptuary; and I
became a voluptuary, and I have remained one.”
CHAPTER VI.
“Yes, so it is; and that went farther and farther with all sorts of
variations. My God! when I remember all my cowardly acts and bad deeds,
I am frightened. And I remember that ‘me’ who, during that period, was
still the butt of his comrades’ ridicule on account of his innocence.
“And when I hear people talk of the gilded youth, of the officers, of
the Parisians, and all these gentlemen, and myself, living wild lives
at the age of thirty, and who have on our consciences hundreds of
crimes toward women, terrible and varied, when we enter a parlor or a
ball-room, washed, shaven, and perfumed, with very white linen, in
dress coats or in uniform, as emblems of purity, oh, the disgust! There
will surely come a time, an epoch, when all these lives and all this
cowardice will be unveiled!
“So, nevertheless, I lived, until the age of thirty, without abandoning
for a minute my intention of marrying, and building an elevated
conjugal life; and with this in view I watched all young girls who