Then the voice replied:
‘I am John the Divine, the beloved disciple of Christ.’
And the sinner rejoiced and said:
‘Now surely I shall be allowed to enter. Peter and David must let me in, because they know man’s weakness and God’s mercy; and thou wilt let me in, because thou lovest much. Was it not thou, John the Divine, who wrote that God is Love, and that he who loves not, knows not God? And in thine old age didst thou not say unto men: “Brethren, love one another.” How, then, canst thou look on me with hatred, and drive me away? Either thou must renounce what thou hast said, or loving me, must let me enter the kingdom of heaven.’
And the gates of Paradise opened, and John embraced the repentant sinner and took him into the kingdom of heaven.
THE KREUTZER
SONATA
But I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matt. v. 28.
The disciples say unto him, If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given. Ibid. xix. 10, 11.
The figures in text refer to the Appendix of readings contained in the lithographed version circulated subterraneously in Russia (see this page-this page) during the time that the book was banned by the censor.
I
IT was early spring, and the second day of our journey. Passengers going short distances entered and left our carriage, but three others, like myself, had come all the way with the train. One was a lady, plain and no longer young, who smoked, had a harassed look, and wore a mannish coat and cap; another was an acquaintance of hers, a talkative man of about forty, whose things looked neat and new; the third was a rather short man1 who kept himself apart. He was not old, but his curly hair had gone prematurely grey. His movements were abrupt and his unusually glittering eyes moved rapidly from one object to another. He wore an old overcoat, evidently from a first-rate tailor, with an astrakhan collar, and a tall astrakhan cap. When he unbuttoned his overcoat a sleeveless Russian coat and embroidered shirt showed beneath it. A peculiarity of this man was a strange sound he emitted, something like a clearing of his throat, or a laugh begun and sharply broken off.
All the way this man had carefully avoided making acquaintance or having any intercourse with his fellow passengers. When spoken to by those near him he gave short and abrupt answers, and at other times read, looked out of the window, smoked, or drank tea and ate something he took out of an old bag.
It seemed to me that his loneliness depressed him, and I made several attempts to converse with him, but whenever our eyes met, which happened often as he sat nearly opposite me, he turned away and took up his book or looked out of the window.
Towards the second evening, when our train stopped at a large station, this nervous man fetched himself some boiling water and made tea. The man with the neat new things – a lawyer as I found out later – and his neighbour, the smoking lady with the mannish coat, went to the refreshment-room to drink tea.
During their absence several new passengers entered the carriage, among them a tall, shaven, wrinkled old man, evidently a tradesman, in a coat lined with skunk fur, and a cloth cap with an enormous peak. The tradesman sat down opposite the seats of the lady and the lawyer, and immediately started a conversation with a young man who had also entered at that station and, judging by his appearance, was a tradesman’s clerk.2
I was sitting the other side of the gangway and as the train was standing still I could hear snatches of their conversation when nobody was passing between us. The tradesman began by saying that he was going to his estate which was only one station farther on; then as usual the conversation turned to prices and trade, and they spoke of the state of business in Moscow and then of the Nízhni-Nóvgorod Fair. The clerk began to relate how a wealthy merchant, known to both of them, had gone on the spree at the fair, but the old man interrupted him by telling of the orgies he had been at in former times at Kunávin Fair. He evidently prided himself on the part he had played in them, and3 recounted with pleasure how he and some acquaintances, together with the merchant they had been speaking of, had once got drunk at Kunávin and played such a trick that he had to tell of it in a whisper. The clerk’s roar of laughter filled the whole carriage; the old man laughed also, exposing two yellow teeth.
Not expecting to hear anything interesting, I got up to stroll about the platform till the train should start. At the carriage door I met the lawyer and the lady who were talking with animation as they approached.
‘You won’t have time,’ said the sociable lawyer, ‘the second bell will ring in a moment.’1
And the bell did ring before I had gone the length of the train. When I returned, the animated conversation between the lady and the lawyer was proceeding. The old tradesman sat silent opposite to them, looking sternly before him, and occasionally mumbled disapprovingly as if chewing something.
‘Then she plainly informed her husband,’ the lawyer was smilingly saying as I passed him, ‘that she was not able, and did not wish, to live with him since …’
He went on to say something I could not hear. Several other passengers came in after me. The guard passed, a porter hurried in, and for some time the noise made their voices inaudible. When all was quiet again the conversation had evidently turned from the particular case to general considerations.
The lawyer was saying that public opinion in Europe was occupied with the question of divorce, and that cases of ‘that kind’ were occurring more and more often in Russia. Noticing that his was the only voice audible, he stopped his discourse and turned to the old man.4
‘Those things did not happen in the old days, did they?’ he said, smiling pleasantly.
The old man was about to reply, but the train moved and he took off his cap, crossed himself, and whispered a prayer. The lawyer turned away his eyes and waited politely. Having finished his prayer and crossed himself three times the old man set his cap straight, pulled it well down over his forehead, changed his position, and began to speak.
‘They used to happen even then, sir, but less often,’ he said. ‘As times are now they can’t help happening. People have got too educated.’
The train moved faster and faster and jolted over the joints of the rails, making it difficult to hear, but being interested I moved nearer. The nervous man with the glittering eyes opposite me, evidently also interested, listened without changing his place.
‘What is wrong with education?’ said the lady, with a scarcely perceptible smile. ‘Surely it can’t be better to marry as they used to in the old days when the bride and bridegroom did not even see one another before the wedding,’ she continued, answering not what her interlocutor had said but what she thought he would say, in the way many ladies have. ‘Without knowing whether they loved, or whether they could love, they married just anybody, and were wretched all their lives. And you think that was better?’ she said, evidently addressing me and the lawyer chiefly and least of all the old man with whom she was talking.
‘They’ve got so very educated,’ the tradesman reiterated, looking contemptuously at the lady and leaving her question unanswered.
‘It would be interesting to know how you explain the connexion between education and matrimonial discord,’ said the lawyer, with a scarcely perceptible smile.