The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852

  Chapter XXXIII

  It was late when he awoke the next day. His hosts were no longer in. Hedid not go shooting, but now took up a book, and now went out into theporch, and now again re-entered the hut and lay down on the bed.Vanyusha thought he was ill.

  Towards evening Olenin got up, resolutely began writing, and wrote ontill late at night. He wrote a letter, but did not post it because hefelt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, andbesides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understandit. This is what he wrote:

  'I receive letters of condolence from Russia. They are afraid that Ishall perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: "He will becomecoarse; he will be behind the times in everything; he will take todrink, and who knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl." It was notfor nothing, they say, that Ermolov declared: "Anyone serving in theCaucasus for ten years either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries aloose woman." How terrible! Indeed it won't do for me to ruin myselfwhen I might have the great happiness of even becoming the CountessB----'s husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a Marechal de noblesse ofmy district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You donot know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life oncein all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every daybefore me--those eternally unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majesticwoman in that primitive beauty in which the first woman must have comefrom her creator's hands--and then it becomes clear who is ruininghimself and who is living truly or falsely--you or I. If you only knewhow despicable and pitiable you, in your delusions, seem to me! When Ipicture to myself--in place of my hut, my forests, and my love--thosedrawing-rooms, those women with their pomatum-greased hair eked outwith false curls, those unnaturally grimacing lips, those hidden,feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of obligatory drawing-roomconversation which has no right to the name--I feel unendurablyrevolted. I then see before me those obtuse faces, those rich eligiblegirls whose looks seem to say:

  "It's all right, you may come near though I am rich and eligible"--andthat arranging and rearranging of seats, that shameless match-makingand that eternal tittle-tattle and pretence; those rules--with whom toshake hands, to whom only to nod, with whom to converse (and all thisdone deliberately with a conviction of its inevitability), thatcontinual ennui in the blood passing on from generation to generation.Try to understand or believe just this one thing: you need only see andcomprehend what truth and beauty are, and all that you now say andthink and all your wishes for me and for yourselves will fly to atoms!Happiness is being with nature, seeing her, and conversing with her."He may even (God forbid) marry a common Cossack girl, and be quitelost socially" I can imagine them saying of me with sincere pity! Yetthe one thing I desire is to be quite "lost" in your sense of the word.I wish to marry a Cossack girl, and dare not because it would be aheight of happiness of which I am unworthy.

  'Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryanka.The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh inme. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted inher beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and thesky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful asthey. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of mylife and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I couldfind nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be.Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage,nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I haveexperienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that shewas near--and if I was not happy, I was at peace.

  'After an evening gathering at which I met her and touched her, I feltthat between that woman and myself there existed an indissoluble thoughunacknowledged bond against which I could not struggle, yet I didstruggle. I asked myself: "Is it possible to love a woman who willnever understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possibleto love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?"But I was already in love with her, though I did not yet trust to myfeelings.

  'After that evening when I first spoke to her our relations changed.Before that she had been to me an extraneous but majestic object ofexternal nature: but since then she has become a human being. I beganto meet her, to talk to her, and sometimes to go to work for her fatherand to spend whole evenings with them, and in this intimate intercourseshe remained still in my eyes just as pure, inaccessible, and majestic.She always responded with equal calm, pride, and cheerful equanimity.Sometimes she was friendly, but generally her every look, every word,and every movement expressed equanimity--not contemptuous, but crushingand bewitching. Every day with a feigned smile on my lips I tried toplay a part, and with torments of passion and desire in my heart Ispoke banteringly to her. She saw that I was dissembling, but lookedstraight at me cheerfully and simply. This position became unbearable.I wished not to deceive her but to tell her all I thought and felt. Iwas extremely agitated. We were in the vineyard when I began to tellher of my love, in words I am now ashamed to remember. I am ashamedbecause I ought not to have dared to speak so to her because she stoodfar above such words and above the feeling they were meant to express.I said no more, but from that day my position has been intolerable. Idid not wish to demean myself by continuing our former flippantrelations, and at the same time I felt that I had not yet reached thelevel of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myselfdespairingly, "What am I to do?" In foolish dreams I imagined her nowas my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas withdisgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would bemurder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri AndreichOlenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of ourofficers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukashka,and steal horses, get drunk on chikhir, sing rollicking songs, killpeople, and when drunk climb in at her window for the night without athought of who and what I am, it would be different: then we mightunderstand one another and I might be happy.

  'I tried to throw myself into that kind of life but was still moreconscious of my own weakness and artificiality. I cannot forget myselfand my complex, distorted past, and my future appears to me still morehopeless. Every day I have before me the distant snowy mountains andthis majestic, happy woman. But not for me is the only happinesspossible in the world; I cannot have this woman! What is most terribleand yet sweetest in my condition is that I feel that I understand herbut that she will never understand me; not because she is inferior: onthe contrary she ought not to understand me. She is happy, she is likenature: consistent, calm, and self-contained; and I, a weak distortedbeing, want her to understand my deformity and my torments! I have notslept at night, but have aimlessly passed under her windows notrendering account to myself of what was happening to me. On the 18thour company started on a raid, and I spent three days away from thevillage. I was sad and apathetic, the usual songs, cards,drinking-bouts, and talk of rewards in the regiment, were morerepulsive to me than usual. Yesterday I returned home and saw her, myhut. Daddy Eroshka, and the snowy mountains, from my porch, and wasseized by such a strong, new feeling of joy that I understood it all. Ilove this woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in mylife. I know what has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by thisfeeling, I am not ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not myfault that I love. It has come about against my will. I tried to escapefrom my love by self-renunciation, and tried to devise a joy in theCossack Lukashka's and Maryanka's love, but thereby only stirred up myown love and jealousy. This is not the ideal, the so-called exaltedlove which I have known before; not that sort of attachment in whichyou admire your own love and feel that the source of your emotion iswithin yourself and do everything yourself. I have felt that too. It isstill less a desire for enjoyment: it is something different. Perhapsin her I love nature: the personification of all that is beautiful innature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some elementalforce loves through me; the whole of God's world, all nat
ure, pressesthis love into my soul and says, "Love her." I love her not with mymind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feelmyself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. I wrote beforeabout the new convictions to which my solitary life had brought me, butno one knows with what labour they shaped themselves within me and withwhat joy I realized them and saw a new way of life opening out beforeme; nothing was dearer to me than those convictions... Well! ... lovehas come and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is evendifficult for me to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold,and abstract state of mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds allthat laborious inward toil, and no regret remains for what hasvanished! Self-renunciation is all nonsense and absurdity! That ispride, a refuge from well-merited unhappiness, and salvation from theenvy of others' happiness: "Live for others, and do good!"--Why? whenin my soul there is only love for myself and the desire to love her andto live her life with her? Not for others, not for Lukashka, I nowdesire happiness. I do not now love those others. Formerly I shouldhave told myself that this is wrong. I should have tormented myselfwith the questions: What will become of her, of me, and of Lukashka?Now I don't care. I do not live my own life, there is somethingstronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but formerly I was deadand only now do I live. Today I will go to their house and tell hereverything.'