The Kreutzer Sonata: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Posdnicheff's face had become transformed; his eyes were pitiable; their
expression seemed strange, like that of another being than himself; his
moustache and beard turned up toward the top of his face; his nose was
diminished, and his mouth enlarged, immense, frightful.

"Yes," he resumed "she had grown stouter since ceasing to conceive,
and her anxieties about her children began to disappear. Not even
to disappear. One would have said that she was waking from a long
intoxication, that on coming to herself she had perceived the entire
universe with its joys, a whole world in which she had not learned to
live, and which she did not understand.

"'If only this world shall not vanish! When time is past, when old age
comes, one cannot recover it.' Thus, I believe, she thought, or rather
felt. Moreover, she could neither think nor feel otherwise. She had been
brought up in this idea that there is in the world but one thing worthy
of attention,--love. In marrying, she had known something of this love,
but very far from everything that she had understood as promised her,
everything that she expected. How many disillusions! How much suffering!
And an unexpected torture,--the children! This torture had told upon
her, and then, thanks to the obliging doctor, she had learned that it
is possible to avoid having children. That had made her glad. She had
tried, and she was now revived for the only thing that she knew,--for
love. But love with a husband polluted by jealousy and ill-nature was no
longer her ideal. She began to think of some other tenderness; at least,
that is what I thought. She looked about her as if expecting some event
or some being. I noticed it, and I could not help being anxious.

"Always, now, it happened that, in talking with me through a third party
(that is, in talking with others, but with the intention that I should
hear), she boldly expressed,--not thinking that an hour before she had
said the opposite,--half joking, half seriously, this idea that maternal
anxieties are a delusion; that it is not worth while to sacrifice one's
life to children. When one is young, it is necessary to enjoy life. So
she occupied herself less with the children, not with the same intensity
as formerly, and paid more and more attention to herself, to her
face,--although she concealed it,--to her pleasures, and even to her
perfection from the worldly point of view. She began to devote herself
passionately to the piano, which had formerly stood forgotten in the
corner. There, at the piano, began the adventure.

"The MAN appeared."

Posdnicheff seemed embarrassed, and twice again there escaped him that
nasal sound of which I spoke above. I thought that it gave him pain to
refer to the MAN, and to remember him. He made an effort, as if to
break down the obstacle that embarrassed him, and continued with
determination.

"He was a bad man in my eyes, and not because he has played such an
important role in my life, but because he was really such. For the
rest, from the fact that he was bad, we must conclude that he was
irresponsible. He was a musician, a violinist. Not a professional
musician, but half man of the world, half artist. His father, a country
proprietor, was a neighbor of my father's. The father had become ruined,
and the children, three boys, were all sent away. Our man, the youngest,
was sent to his godmother at Paris. There they placed him in the
Conservatory, for he showed a taste for music. He came out a violinist,
and played in concerts."

On the point of speaking evil of the other, Posdnicheff checked himself,
stopped, and said suddenly:

"In truth, I know not how he lived. I only know that that year he came
to Russia, and came to see me. Moist eyes of almond shape, smiling red
lips, a little moustache well waxed, hair brushed in the latest fashion,
a vulgarly pretty face,--what the women call 'not bad,'--feebly built
physically, but with no deformity; with hips as broad as a woman's;
correct, and insinuating himself into the familiarity of people as far
as possible, but having that keen sense that quickly detects a false
step and retires in reason,--a man, in short, observant of the external
rules of dignity, with that special Parisianism that is revealed in
buttoned boots, a gaudy cravat, and that something which foreigners pick
up in Paris, and which, in its peculiarity and novelty, always has
an influence on our women. In his manners an external and artificial
gayety, a way, you know, of referring to everything by hints, by
unfinished fragments, as if everything that one says you knew already,
recalled it, and could supply the omissions. Well, he, with his music,
was the cause of all.

"At the trial the affair was so represented that everything seemed
attributable to jealousy. It is false,--that is, not quite false, but
there was something else. The verdict was rendered that I was a deceived
husband, that I had killed in defence of my sullied honor (that is the
way they put it in their language), and thus I was acquitted. I tried to
explain the affair from my own point of view, but they concluded that I
simply wanted to rehabilitate the memory of my wife. Her relations with
the musician, whatever they may have been, are now of no importance
to me or to her. The important part is what I have told you. The whole
tragedy was due to the fact that this man came into our house at a time
when an immense abyss had already been dug between us, that frightful
tension of mutual hatred, in which the slightest motive sufficed to
precipitate the crisis. Our quarrels in the last days were something
terrible, and the more astonishing because they were followed by a
brutal passion extremely strained. If it had not been he, some other
would have come. If the pretext had not been jealousy, I should have
discovered another. I insist upon this point,--that all husbands
who live the married life that I lived must either resort to outside
debauchery, or separate from their wives, or kill themselves, or kill
their wives as I did. If there is any one in my case to whom this does
not happen, he is a very rare exception, for, before ending as I ended,
I was several times on the point of suicide, and my wife made several
attempts to poison herself."

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