The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
can no longer live. Regular life does not exist for them. The whole
life of the family hangs by a hair. What a terrible thing it is to
suddenly receive the news that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise
has a cramp in the stomach! Immediately you abandon everything, you
forget everything, everything becomes nothing. The essential thing is
the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You cannot begin a conversation
but little Pierre comes running in with an anxious air to ask if he may
eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put on, or else it is the servant
who enters with a screaming baby.
“Regular, steady family life does not exist. Where you live, and
consequently what you do, depends upon the health of the little ones,
the health of the little ones depends upon nobody, and, thanks to the
doctors, who pretend to aid health, your entire life is disturbed. It
is a perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe ourselves out of it when a
new danger comes: more attempts to save. Always the situation of
sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was
done on purpose, that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer me,
since that solved the question so simply for her benefit. It seemed to
me that all that she did at those times was done for its effect upon
me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suffered and was tortured
on account of the little ones, their health, and their diseases.
“A torture to both of us, but to her the children were also a means of
forgetting herself, like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she was
very sad, that she was relieved, when a child fell sick, at being able
to take refuge in this intoxication. It was involuntary intoxication,
because as yet there was nothing else. On every side we heard that Mrs.
So-and-so had lost children, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of
Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the
house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And
the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in
her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some
word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help
us—diphtheria, and off she went.
“It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had
the belief that ‘God has given, God has taken away,’ that the soul of
the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die
innocent than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like
this faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their
children. But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet
it is necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly
believe in medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One
believes in X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see
the idiocy of their beliefs. They believe _quia absurdum_, because, in
reality, if they did not believe in a stupid way, they would see the
vanity of all that these brigands prescribe for them. Scarlatina is a
contagious disease; so, when one lives in a large city, half the family
has to move away from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every
man in the city is a centre through which pass innumerable diameters,
carrying threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no obstacle: the
baker, the tailor, the coachman, the laundresses.
“And I would undertake, for every man who moves on account of
contagion, to find in his new dwelling-place another contagion similar,
if not the same.
“But that is not all. Every one knows rich people who, after a case of
diphtheria, destroy everything in their residences, and then fall sick
in houses newly built and furnished. Every one knows, likewise, numbers
of men who come in contact with sick people and do not get infected.
Our anxieties are due to the people who circulate tall stories. One
woman says that she has an excellent doctor. ‘Pardon me,’ answers the
other, ‘he killed such a one,’ or such a one. And _vice versa_. Bring
her another, who knows no more, who learned from the same books, who
treats according to the same formulas, but who goes about in a
carriage, and asks a hundred roubles a visit, and she will have faith
in him.
“It all lies in the fact that our women are savages. They have no
belief in God, but some of them believe in the evil eye, and the others
in doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith they would know that
scarlatina, diphtheria, etc., are not so terrible, since they cannot
disturb that which man can and should love,—the soul. There can result
from them only that which none of us can avoid,—disease and death.
Without faith in God, they love only physically, and all their energy
is concentrated upon the preservation of life, which cannot be
preserved, and which the doctors promise the fools of both sexes to
save. And from that time there is nothing to be done; the doctors must
be summoned.
“Thus the presence of the children not only did not improve our
relations as husband and wife, but, on the contrary, disunited us. The
children became an additional cause of dispute, and the larger they
grew, the more they became an instrument of struggle.
“One would have said that we used them as weapons with which to combat
each other. Each of us had his favorite. I made use of little Basile
(the eldest), she of Lise. Further, when the children reached an age
where their characters began to be defined, they became allies, which
we drew each in his or her own direction. They suffered horribly from
this, the poor things, but we, in our perpetual hubbub, were not
clear-headed enough to think of them. The little girl was devoted to
me, but the eldest boy, who resembled my wife, his favorite, often
inspired me with dislike.”
CHAPTER XVII.
“We lived at first in the country, then in the city, and, if the final
misfortune had not happened, I should have lived thus until my old age
and should then have believed that I had had a good life,—not too good,
but, on the other hand, not bad,—an existence such as other people
lead. I should not have understood the abyss of misfortune and ignoble
falsehood in which I floundered about, feeling that something was not
right. I felt, in the first place, that I, a man, who, according to my
ideas, ought to be the master, wore the petticoats, and that I could
not get rid of them. The principal cause of my subjection was the
children. I should have liked to free myself, but I could not. Bringing
up the children, and resting upon them, my wife ruled. I did not then
realize that she could not help ruling, especially because, in
marrying, she was morally superior to me, as every young girl is
incomparably superior to the man, since she is incomparably purer.
Strange thing! The ordinary wife in our society is a very commonplace
person or worse, selfish, gossiping, whimsical, whereas the ordinary
young girl, until the age of twenty, is a charming being, ready for
everything that is beautiful and lofty. Why is this so? Evidently
because husbands pervert them, and lower them to their own level.
“In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the little girls find
themselves in a better situation. In the first place, the young girl is
not subjected to the perverting conditions to which we are subjected.
She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor cards, nor comrades, nor
public houses, nor public functions. And then the chief thing is that
she is physically pure, and that is why, in marrying, she is superior
to her husband. She is superior to man as a young girl, and when she
becomes a wife in our society, where there is no need to work in order
to live, she becomes superior, also, by the gravity of the acts of
generation, birth, and nursing.
“Woman, in bringing a child into the world, and giving it her bosom,
sees clearly that her affair is more serious than the affair of man,
who sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She knows that in these
functions the main thing is money, and money can be made in different
ways, and for that very reason money is not inevitably necessary, like
nursing a child. Consequently woman is necessarily superior to man, and
must rule. But man, in our society, not only does not recognize this,
but, on the contrary, always looks upon her from the height of his
grandeur, despising what she does.
“Thus my wife despised me for my work at the Zemstvo, because she gave
birth to children and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that woman’s
labor was most contemptible, which one might and should laugh at.
“Apart from the other motives, we were also separated by a mutual
contempt. Our relations grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that
period when, not only did dissent provoke hostility, but hostility
provoked dissent. Whatever she might say, I was sure in advance to hold
a contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward the fourth year of our
marriage it was tacitly decided between us that no intellectual
community was possible, and we made no further attempts at it. As to
the simplest objects, we each held obstinately to our own opinions.
With strangers we talked upon the most varied and most intimate
matters, but not with each other. Sometimes, in listening to my wife
talk with others in my presence, I said to myself: ‘What a woman!
Everything that she says is a lie!’ And I was astonished that the
person with whom she was conversing did not see that she was lying.
When we were together; we were condemned to silence, or to
conversations which, I am sure, might have been carried on by animals.
“‘What time is it? It is bed-time. What is there for dinner to-day?
Where shall we go? What is there in the newspaper? The doctor must be
sent for, Lise has a sore throat.’
“Unless we kept within the extremely narrow limits of such
conversation, irritation was sure to ensue. The presence of a third
person relieved us, for through an intermediary we could still
communicate. She probably believed that she was always right. As for
me, in my own eyes, I was a saint beside her.
“The periods of what we call love arrived as often as formerly. They
were more brutal, without refinement, without ornament; but they were
short, and generally followed by periods of irritation without cause,
irritation fed by the most trivial pretexts. We had spats about the
coffee, the table-cloth, the carriage, games of cards,—trifles, in
short, which could not be of the least importance to either of us. As
for me, a terrible execration was continually boiling up within me. I
watched her pour the tea, swing her foot, lift her spoon to her mouth,
and blow upon hot liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these
had been so many crimes.
“I did not notice that these periods of irritation depended very
regularly upon the periods of love. Each of the latter was followed by
one of the former. A period of intense love was followed by a long
period of anger; a period of mild love induced a mild irritation. We
did not understand that this love and this hatred were two opposite
faces of the same animal feeling. To live thus would be terrible, if
one understood the philosophy of it. But we did not perceive this, we
did not analyze it. It is at once the torture and the relief of man
that, when he lives irregularly, he can cherish illusions as to the
miseries of his situation. So did we. She tried to forget herself in
sudden and absorbing occupations, in household duties, the care of the
furniture, her dress and that of her children, in the education of the
latter, and in looking after their health. These were occupations that
did not arise from any immediate necessity, but she accomplished them
as if her life and that of her children depended on whether the pastry