University of Virginia Library

XXI

He sat on the stone bench in the shade of the cypresses, looking very lean, small, and gray, and yet resembling Jehovah Sabaoth who is a little tired and is amusing himself

by trying to whistle in tune with a chaffinch. The bird sang in the darkness of the thick foliage: he peered up at it, screwing up his sharp little eyes and, pursing his lips like a child, he whistled incompetently.

"What a furious little creature! It's in a rage. What bird is it?"

I told him about the chaffinch and its characteristic jealousy.

"All life long one song," he said, "and yet jealous. Man has a thousand songs in his heart and is yet blamed for jealousy; is it fair?" He spoke musingly, as though asking himself questions. "There are moments when a man says to a woman more than she ought to know about him. He speaks and forgets, but she remembers. Perhaps jealousy comes from the fear of degrading one's soul, of being humiliated and ridiculous? Not that a woman is dangerous who holds a man by his lusts but she who holds him by his soul. . . ."

When I pointed out the contradiction in this with his "Kreutzer Sonata," the radiance of a sudden smile beamed through his beard and he said:

"I am not a chaffinch."

In the evening while walking, he suddenly said:

"Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be — the tragedy of the bedroom."

Saying this, he smiled triumphantly: at times, he has the broad calm smile of a man who has overcome something extremely difficult or from whom some sharp, long-gnawing pain has lifted suddenly. Every thought burrows into his soul like a tick; he either tears it out at once, or allows it to have its fill of his blood, and then, when full, it just drops off of itself.

He read to Suler and me a variant of the scene of the fall of "Father Sergius" — a merciless scene. Suler pouted and fidgeted uneasily.

"What's the matter? Don't you like it?" Leo Nikolaevich asked.

"It's too brutal, as though from Dostoievsky. She is a filthy girl, and her breasts like

pancakes, and all that. Why didn't he sin with a beautiful, healthy woman?"

"That would be sin without justification; as it is, there is justification in pity for the girl. Who could desire her as she is?"

"I can not make it out. . . ."

"There's a great deal, Liovushka, which you can't make out: you're not shrewd. . . ."

There came in Andrey Lvovich's wife and the conversation was interrupted. As she and Suler went out, Leo Nikolaevich said to me: "Leopold is the purest man I know. He is like that: if he did something bad, it would be out of pity for some one."