The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

After the Ball

SO YOU SAY that man cannot understand what’s good and what’s bad on his own, that it’s all a matter of the environment, that he’s a prey to the environment. But I think it’s all a matter of chance. Here, I’ll tell you about myself.”

So began the universally esteemed Ivan Vassilievich, after the conversation that had gone on among us about the necessity, for personal perfection, of first changing the conditions in which people live. No one, as a matter of fact, had said it was impossible to understand for oneself what is good and what is bad, but Ivan Vassilievich had that way of responding to his own thoughts as they emerged during a conversation, and of using those thoughts as an occasion for recounting episodes from his life. Often he completely forgot the pretext for his telling the story, being carried away by the telling itself, the more so as he did it very candidly and truthfully.

And so he did now.

“I’ll tell you about myself. My whole life has turned out thus and not otherwise, not from the environment, but from something else entirely.”

“From what, then?” we asked.

“That’s a long story. It will take a lot of telling to understand it.”

“Well, so tell us.”

Ivan Vassilievich fell to thinking and shook his head.

“Yes,” he said. “My whole life was changed by one night, or rather one morning.”

“What on earth happened?”

“What happened was that I was deeply in love. I had been in love many times before, but never so deeply as that. It’s a thing of the past; she already has married daughters. It was B …, yes, Varenka B….” Ivan Vassilievich gave her name. “She was a remarkable beauty even at the age of fifty. But in her youth, at eighteen, she was enchanting: tall, slender, graceful, majestic, precisely majestic. She always held herself extraordinarily erect, as if she could not do otherwise, throwing her head back slightly, and this, along with her beauty and her height, despite her thinness, even boniness, gave her a sort of regal look, which would have frightened people off, if it hadn’t been for the gracious, always cheerful smile of her mouth, and of her enchanting, shining eyes, and of the whole of her sweet, young being.”

“How well Ivan Vassilievich describes her!”

“No matter how I describe her, it’s impossible to describe her so that you understand how she was. But that’s not the point: what I want to tell you about happened back in the forties. I was then a student at a provincial university. I don’t know whether this was good or bad, but at that time there were no circles, no theories in our university; we were simply young and lived the way young people do: studied and had fun. I was a very pert and merry lad, and rich besides. I owned a dashing ambler, I went sledding with girls (skating wasn’t in fashion yet), and caroused with my comrades (at that time we drank nothing but champagne; if we had no money, we drank nothing, but we did not drink vodka as they do now). But my chief pleasure consisted in soirées and balls. I was a good dancer and not ugly to look at.”

“Now, don’t be modest,” one of his lady listeners interrupted him. “We know your daguerreotype portrait. Not only were you not ugly, you were a handsome man.”

“Handsome if you like, that’s not the point. The point is that at the time of this deepest love of mine for her, on the last day before Lent, I was at a ball at the provincial marshal’s,¹ a good-natured old man, rich and hospitable, and a gentleman of the chamber. The hostess was his equally good-natured wife, in a puce-colored velvet dress, with a diamond frontlet on her head, and with her old, plump, white shoulders and bosom exposed, as in the portraits of Elizaveta Petrovna.² The ball was wonderful: an excellent ballroom, with a choir loft, musicians—the then-famous serfs of a music-loving landowner, a magnificent buffet, and an endless sea of champagne. Though I was a fancier of champagne, I did not drink, because, without any wine, I was drunk with love, but to make up for it I danced till I dropped, danced quadrilles, and waltzes, and polkas—naturally, as much as possible, with Varenka. She was wearing a white gown with a pink sash and white kid gloves that reached almost to her thin, sharp elbows, and white satin slippers. The mazurka was taken from me: a most disgusting engineer, Anisimov—to this day I can’t forgive him for it—invited her as soon as she came in, while I had stopped at the barber’s and for gloves and was late. So I danced the mazurka not with her, but with a little German girl whom I had once courted a bit. But I’m afraid I was very impolite to her that evening, did not talk to her, did not look at her, but saw only the tall, slender figure in a white gown with a pink sash, her radiant, flushed face with its dimples, and her tender, sweet eyes. Not just I, everyone looked at her and admired her, both men and women admired her, even though she outshone them all. It was impossible not to admire her.

“By the rules, so to speak, I did not dance the mazurka with her, but in fact I danced it with her almost all the time. She, quite unembarrassed, would come straight to me across the entire ballroom, and I would jump up without waiting for an invitation, and she would thank me with her smile for my perceptiveness. When we were brought to her and she failed to guess my quality,³ she, not giving me her hand, would shrug her thin shoulders and smile at me, as a sign of regret and consolation. When the figure of the mazurka was a waltz, I would waltz with her for a long time, and she, breathing quickly, would smile at me and say, ‘Encore.’

“And I would waltz more and more and was not even aware of my own body.”

“Well, how could you not be aware of it? I suppose, when you put your arm around her waist, you were quite aware not only of your own body, but of hers as well,” said one of the guests.

Ivan Vassilievich suddenly turned red and almost shouted angrily:

“Yes, that’s you, today’s young people. You see nothing but the body. In our time it wasn’t so. The more deeply in love I was, the more bodiless she became for me. You now see feet, ankles, and what-not else, you undress the women you’re in love with, but for me, as Alphonse Karr⁴—he was a good writer—said: ‘The object of my love always wore bronze clothing.’ We not only did not undress, we tried to cover up nakedness, like Noah’s good son.⁵ Well, you won’t understand …”

“Don’t listen to him. What happened next?” said one of us.

“Yes. So I danced mostly with her and did not notice how the time passed. The musicians now kept repeating the same tune of the mazurka with a sort of weary despair, you know, as it happens at the end of a ball; the papas and mamas had already gotten up from their card tables in the drawing rooms in anticipation of supper; servants scurried about more frequently, carrying things. It was past two o’clock. We had to take advantage of the last minutes. I chose her once more, and for the hundredth time we went the length of the ballroom.

“‘So the quadrille is mine after supper?’ I said to her, escorting her to her place.

“‘Certainly, if I’m not taken away,’ she said, smiling.

“‘I won’t let them,’ I said.

“‘Give me back my fan,’ she said.

“‘I’m sorry to give it up,’ I said, handing her the inexpensive white fan.

“‘Take this, then, so that you won’t be sorry,’ she said, plucking a little feather from the fan and giving it to me.

“I took the little feather and only with my glance could I express all my rapture and gratitude. I was not only cheerful and content, I was happy, blissful, I was good, I was not I but some unearthly being, knowing no evil and capable only of good. I put the feather into my glove and stood, unable to part from her.

“‘Look, papà has been asked to dance,’ she said, pointing to the tall, stately figure of her father, a colonel, with silver epaulettes, standing in the doorway with the hostess and other ladies.

“‘Varenka, come here,’ we heard the loud voice of the hostess in the diamond frontlet and with Elizavetan shoulders.

“Varenka went to the door, and I followed.

“‘Persuade your father to take a turn with you, ma chère.* Please, Pyotr Vladislavich,’ the hostess turned to the colonel.

“Varenka’s father was a very handsome, stately, tall, and fresh old man. His face was very ruddy, with white mustaches twirled up à la Nicolas I,⁶ side-whiskers, also white and meeting the mustaches, and the hair brushed forward on his temples, and there was the same gracious, joyful smile as his daughter’s in his shining eyes and his lips. He was splendidly built, with a broad, thrust-out martial chest, not overly adorned by medals, with strong shoulders and long, slim legs. He was a military commander with the typical bearing of an old campaigner of Nicolas’s time.

“As we approached the door, the colonel was refusing, saying that he had forgotten how to dance, but all the same, smiling, he reached his hand to his left side, took the sword from his sword belt, handed it to an obliging young man, and, drawing a kid glove onto his right hand, said with a smile, ‘Everything according to the rules,’ took his daughter’s hand, and stood in quarter profile waiting for the beat.

“Having waited for the start of the mazurka tune, he pertly stamped one foot, kicked up the other, and his tall, heavy figure began to move about the room, now slowly and smoothly, now noisily and stormily, with a tapping of soles and of foot against foot. Varenka’s graceful figure floated beside him inconspicuously, shortening or lengthening the steps of her small white satin feet in time with the music. The whole ballroom followed every movement of the pair. I not only admired them, but watched them with rapturous tenderness. I was especially moved by his boots with their tight footstraps—good calfskin boots, not with fashionable pointed toes, but with old-fashioned square toes and no heels. The boots had obviously been constructed by a battalion bootmaker. ‘He doesn’t buy fashionable boots, but wears homemade ones, so as to dress his beloved daughter and take her out,’ I thought, and those square-toed boots especially moved me. It was clear that he had once been an excellent dancer, but was now heavy, and his legs were not sufficiently supple for all those beautiful and quick steps he was trying to perform. But all the same he adroitly made two circles. When, quickly spreading his legs, he brought them together again and dropped, if somewhat heavily, to one knee, and she, smiling and straightening her skirt, which he had snagged on, walked smoothly around him, everyone applauded loudly. Getting to his feet with some effort, he took his daughter tenderly and sweetly by the ears with his hands and, having kissed her on the forehead, led her over to me, thinking I was going to dance with her. I said that I was not her partner.

“‘Well, all the same, take a turn with her now,’ he said, smiling graciously and putting his sword through the sword belt.

“As it happens that after one drop is poured from a bottle, its contents pour out in great streams, so in my soul my love for Varenka released all the capacity for love concealed in it. At that moment I embraced the whole world with my love. I loved the hostess in the frontlet, with her Elizavetan bosom, and her husband, and her guests, and her servants, and even the engineer Anisimov, who was pouting at me. As for her father, with his homemade boots and gracious smile, just like his daughter’s, at that moment I felt for him a sort of rapturously tender feeling.

“The mazurka ended, the hosts asked their guests to supper, but Colonel B. declined, saying that he had to get up early the next day, and took leave of them. I was afraid that he would take her away, too, but she stayed with her mother.

“After supper I danced the promised quadrille with her and, though it seemed I was infinitely happy, my happiness kept growing and growing. We said nothing about love. I did not ask her or even myself if she loved me. It was enough for me that I loved her. And I feared only that something would spoil my happiness.

“When I came home, undressed, and thought of sleeping, I saw that it was completely impossible. In my hand was the little feather from her fan and the whole glove she had given me as she was leaving and getting into the carriage, and I was helping her mother in and then her. I looked at these things and, without closing my eyes, saw her before me at the moment when, choosing one of two partners, she had guessed my quality, and heard her dear voice as she said: ‘Pride? Yes?’ and joyfully gave me her hand, or when, at dinner, she put her lips to the glass of champagne and looked at me from under her eyebrows with caressing eyes. But most of all I saw her dancing with her father, when she moved smoothly around him and glanced, with pride and joy for herself and for him, at the admiring spectators. And I involuntarily united him and her in one feeling of tender emotion.

“My late brother and I were then living on our own. My brother generally did not like society and did not go to balls, and now he was preparing for his qualifying examinations and was leading a most regular life. He was asleep. I looked at his head buried in the pillow and half covered with a flannel blanket, and felt a loving pity for him, a pity that he did not know or share the happiness I was experiencing. Our serf valet Petrusha met me with a candle and wanted to help me undress, but I dismissed him. The look of his sleepy face with tousled hair seemed sweetly touching to me. Trying to make no noise, I tiptoed to my room and sat on the bed. No, I was too happy, I couldn’t sleep. Besides, I felt hot in the overheated rooms, and, without taking off my uniform, I went quietly to the hall, put on my overcoat, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

“I had left the ball after four o’clock; while I was going home and then sitting at home, two more hours went by, so that when I went out it was already light. It was perfect pre-Lenten weather, there was a mist, the waterlogged snow melted on the roads, and all the roofs were dripping. The B.s were living then on the edge of town, next to a big field, at one end of which was a promenade, at the other a girls’ boarding school. I walked through our deserted lane and came out on the main street, where I began to meet passersby and sledges loaded with firewood, their runners scraping the pavement. The horses rhythmically tossing their wet heads under the glistening shaft-bows, and the draymen, covered with bast mats, splashing through the water in their enormous boots beside their sledges, and the houses on the street, looking very tall in the mist—everything was especially dear and significant to me.

“When I came out to the field where their house was, I saw something big and black at the end of it, in the direction of the promenade, and heard the sounds of a fife and drum coming from there. There had been a singing in my soul all the while, and occasionally I had heard the tune of the mazurka. But this was a different, a harsh, bad music.

“‘What’s this?’ I thought and went in the direction of the sounds down the slippery road across the field. Having gone some hundred paces, I began to make out the black figures of many people through the mist. Soldiers, obviously. ‘It must be a drill,’ I thought, and along with a blacksmith in a greasy jacket and apron, who was carrying something and walked ahead of me, I went closer. The soldiers in black uniforms were standing in two rows facing each other, holding their guns at their sides and not moving. Behind them stood the drummer and fifer, ceaselessly repeating the same unpleasant, shrill melody.

“‘What are they doing?’ I asked the blacksmith, who stopped beside me.

“‘A Tartar’s running the gauntlet for desertion,’ the blacksmith said angrily, looking at the far end of the rows.

“I began to look there, too, and saw something dreadful approaching me between the rows. What was approaching me was a man stripped to the waist, tied to the guns of two soldiers, who were leading him. Beside him walked a tall officer in a greatcoat and a peaked cap, whose figure seemed familiar to me. His whole body jerking, his feet splashing through the melting snow, the punished man moved towards me under a shower of blows from both sides, now lurching backwards—and then the corporals leading him by the guns shoved him ahead—now falling forward—and then the corporals pulled him back to keep him from falling. And the tall officer, not lagging behind him, walked along with a firm, springing gait. It was her father, with his ruddy face and white mustaches and side-whiskers.

“At each blow, the punished man, as if astonished, turned his face twisted with suffering in the direction from which the blow had fallen and, baring his white teeth, repeated the same words. Only when they were quite near could I hear those words. He did not say, but sobbed: ‘Have mercy, brothers. Have mercy, brothers.’ But his brothers had no mercy, and when the procession came even with me, I saw the soldier standing opposite me step forward resolutely and, swinging his rod with a whistle, give a strong blow to the Tartar’s back. The Tartar jerked foward, but the corporals held him, and the same blow fell on him from the other side, and again from this side, and again from that. The colonel walked next to him and, glancing now at his feet, now at the punished man, breathed in air and, puffing his cheeks, let it out slowly through his protruding lips. When the procession had passed the place where I was standing, I caught a glimpse of the punished man’s back between the rows. It was something so mottled, wet, red, unnatural, that I could not believe it was a man’s body.

“‘Oh Lord,’ said the blacksmith next to me.

“The procession moved further on, the blows falling in the same way from both sides on the stumbling, writhing man, the drum beating and the fife whistling in the same way, and the tall, stately figure of the colonel stepping firmly in the same way beside the punished man. Suddenly the colonel stopped and quickly went up to one of the soldiers.

“‘I’ll go easy for you,’ I heard his wrathful voice. ‘So you want to go easy, do you?’

“And I saw how, with his strong hand in its kid glove, he beat the frightened, puny, weak soldier on the face for having brought his rod down on the Tartar’s red back without enough force.

“‘Bring fresh rods!’ he shouted, looking around, and he saw me. Pretending he didn’t know me, he quickly turned away, frowning menacingly and angrily. I was so ashamed that, not knowing where to look, as if I’d been caught in a most shameful act, I lowered my eyes and hurriedly went home. All the way home the beating of the drum and whistling of the fife rang in my ears, then I heard the words ‘Have mercy, brothers,’ then I heard the self-assured, wrathful voice of the colonel shouting: ‘So you want to go easy, do you?’ And meanwhile in my heart there was an almost physical, nauseating anguish, so intense that I stopped several times, and it seemed to me that I was about to vomit up the whole horror that had entered into me from that spectacle. I don’t remember how I reached home and lay down. But as soon as I began to fall asleep, I heard and saw it all again and jumped up.

“‘He obviously knows something that I don’t know,’ I thought about the colonel. ‘If I knew what he knows, I’d understand what I saw, and it wouldn’t torment me.’ But however much I thought, I could not understand what the colonel knew, and I fell asleep only towards evening, and then only after going to see a friend and getting quite drunk with him.

“So, do you think I decided then that what I had seen was a bad thing? Not a bit of it. ‘If it was done with such assurance and was acknowledged by everyone as necessary, it means they know something that I don’t know,’ I thought and tried to find it out. But however much I tried, even afterwards I could not find it out. And not having found it out, I could not enter military service, as I had wanted to before, and not only did not serve in the military, but did not serve anywhere and, as you see, have been good for nothing.”

“Well, we know how good for nothing you’ve been,” one of us said. “Better tell us how many people would have been good for nothing if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Well, now that’s sheer nonsense,” Ivan Vassilievich said with sincere vexation.

“Well, and what about your love?” we asked.

“My love? My love began to wane from that day on. When, as often happened with her, she would lapse into thought, with a smile on her face, I would at once recall the colonel on the square, and it somehow became awkward and unpleasant for me, and I began to see her more rarely. And so love dwindled away. There you see what sort of things can happen and how they can change and redirect a man’s whole life. And you say …” he concluded.

1903

* My dear.