The Kreutzer Sonata: Chapter 22

Chapter 22

"All that day I did not speak to my wife. I could not. Her proximity
excited such hatred that I feared myself. At the table she asked me, in
presence of the children, when I was to start upon a journey. I was to
go the following week to an assembly of the Zemstvo, in a neighboring
locality. I named the date. She asked me if I would need anything for
the journey. I did not answer. I sat silent at the table, and silently
I retired to my study. In those last days she never entered my study,
especially at that hour. Suddenly I heard her steps, her walk, and then
a terribly base idea entered my head that, like the wife of Uri, she
wished to conceal a fault already committed, and that it was for
this reason that she came to see me at this unseasonable hour. 'Is it
possible,' thought I, 'that she is coming to see me?' On hearing her
step as it approached: 'If it is to see me that she is coming, then I am
right.'

"An inexpressible hatred invaded my soul. The steps drew nearer, and
nearer, and nearer yet. Would she pass by and go on to the other room?
No, the hinges creaked, and at the door her tall, graceful, languid
figure appeared. In her face, in her eyes, a timidity, an insinuating
expression, which she tried to hide, but which I saw, and of which I
understood the meaning. I came near suffocating, such were my efforts to
hold my breath, and, continuing to look at her, I took my cigarette, and
lighted it.

"'What does this mean? One comes to talk with you, and you go to
smoking.'

"And she sat down beside me on the sofa, resting against my shoulder. I
recoiled, that I might not touch her.

"'I see that you are displeased with what I wish to play on Sunday,'
said she.

"'I am not at all displeased,' said I.

"'Can I not see?'

"'Well, I congratulate you on your clairvoyance. Only to you every
baseness is agreeable, and I abhor it.'

"'If you are going to swear like a trooper, I am going away.'

"'Then go away. Only know that, if the honor of the family is nothing to
you, to me it is dear. As for you, the devil take you!'

"'What! What is the matter?'

"'Go away, in the name of God.'

"But she did not go away. Was she pretending not to understand, or did
she really not understand what I meant? But she was offended and became
angry.

"'You have become absolutely impossible,' she began, or some such phrase
as that regarding my character, trying, as usual, to give me as much
pain as possible. 'After what you have done to my sister (she referred
to an incident with her sister, in which, beside myself, I had uttered
brutalities; she knew that that tortured me, and tried to touch me in
that tender spot) nothing will astonish me.'

"'Yes, offended, humiliated, and dishonored, and after that to hold
me still responsible,' thought I, and suddenly a rage, such a hatred
invaded me as I do not remember to have ever felt before. For the first
time I desired to express this hatred physically. I leaped upon her, but
at the same moment I understood my condition, and I asked myself whether
it would be well for me to abandon myself to my fury. And I answered
myself that it would be well, that it would frighten her, and, instead
of resisting, I lashed and spurred myself on, and was glad to feel my
anger boiling more and more fiercely.

"'Go away, or I will kill you!' I cried, purposely, with a frightful
voice, and I grasped her by the arm. She did not go away. Then I twisted
her arm, and pushed her away violently.

"'What is the matter with you? Come to your senses!' she shrieked.

"'Go away,' roared I, louder than ever, rolling my eyes wildly. 'It
takes you to put me in such a fury. I do not answer for myself! Go
away!'

"In abandoning myself to my anger, I became steeped in it, and I wanted
to commit some violent act to show the force of my fury. I felt a
terrible desire to beat her, to kill her, but I realized that that could
not be, and I restrained myself. I drew back from her, rushed to the
table, grasped the paper-weight, and threw it on the floor by her side.
I took care to aim a little to one side, and, before she disappeared (I
did it so that she could see it), I grasped a candlestick, which I also
hurled, and then took down the barometer, continuing to shout:

"'Go away! I do not answer for myself!'

"She disappeared, and I immediately ceased my demonstrations. An hour
later the old servant came to me and said that my wife was in a fit
of hysterics. I went to see her. She sobbed and laughed, incapable of
expressing anything, her whole body in a tremble. She was not shamming,
she was really sick. We sent for the doctor, and all night long I cared
for her. Toward daylight she grew calmer, and we became reconciled under
the influence of that feeling which we called 'love.' The next morning,
when, after the reconciliation, I confessed to her that I was jealous of
Troukhatchevsky, she was not at all embarrassed, and began to laugh in
the most natural way, so strange did the possibility of being led astray
by such a man appear to her.

"'With such a man can an honest woman entertain any feeling beyond the
pleasure of enjoying music with him? But if you like, I am ready
to never see him again, even on Sunday, although everybody has been
invited. Write him that I am indisposed, and that will end the
matter. Only one thing annoys me,--that any one could have thought him
dangerous. I am too proud not to detest such thoughts.'

"And she did not lie. She believed what she said. She hoped by her words
to provoke in herself a contempt for him, and thereby to defend herself.
But she did not succeed. Everything was directed against her, especially
that abominable music. So ended the quarrel, and on Sunday our guests
came, and Troukhatchevsky and my wife again played together."

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