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The Light Shines in Darkness, a play by Leo Tolstoy |
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Act 4 Scene 2 |
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_ ACT IV SCENE 2 Nicholas Ivanovich's room. The dance music is heard in the distance. Nicholas Ivanovich has an overcoat on. He puts a letter on the table. Alexander Petrovich, dressed in ragged clothes, is with him. ALEXANDER PETROVICH. Don't worry, we can reach the Caucasus without spending a penny, and there you can settle down. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. We will go by rail as far as TUla, and from thence on foot. Well, I'm ready. [Puts letter in the middle of the table, and goes to the door, where he meets Mary Ivanovna] Oh! Why have you come here? MARY IVANOVNA. Why indeed? To prevent your doing a cruel thing. What's all this for? Why d'you do it? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Why? Because I cannot continue living like this. I cannot endure this terrible, depraved life. MARY IVANOVNA. It is awful. My life--which I give wholly to you and the children--has all of a sudden become "depraved." [Sees Alexander Petrovich] _Renvoyez au moins cet homme. Je ne veux pas qu'il soit temoin de cette conversation._[39] [Note 39: At least send that man away. I don't wish him to be a witness of our conversation.] ALEXANDER PETROVICH. _Comprenez. Toujours moi partez._[40] [Note 40: Alexander Petrovich replies in very bad French: "I understand! I am always to go away!"] NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Wait for me out there, Alexander Petrovich, I'll come in a minute. [Exit Alexander Petrovich.] MARY IVANOVNA. And what can you have in common with such a man as that? Why is he nearer to you than your own wife? It is incomprehensible! And where are you going? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. I have left a letter for you. I did not want to speak; it is too hard; but if you wish it, I will try to say it quietly. MARY IVANOVNA. No, I don't understand. Why do you hate and torture your wife, who has given up everything for you? Tell me, have I been going to balls, or gone in for dress, or flirted? My whole life has been devoted to the family. I nursed them all myself; I brought them up, and this last year the whole weight of their education, and the managing our affairs, has fallen on me.... NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [interrupting] But all this weight falls on you, because you do not wish to live as I proposed. MARY IVANOVNA. But that was impossible! Ask anyone! It was impossible to let the children grow up illiterate, as you wished them to do, and for me to do the washing and cooking. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. I never wanted that! MARY IVANOVNA. Well, anyhow it was something of that kind! No, you are a Christian, you wish to do good, and you say you love men; then why do you torture the woman who has devoted her whole life to you? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. How do I torture you? I love you, but ... MARY IVANOVNA. But is it not torturing me to leave me and to go away? What will everybody say? One of two things, either that I am a bad woman, or that you are mad. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Well, let us say I am mad; but I can't live like this. MARY IVANOVNA. But what is there so terrible in it, even if once in a winter (and only once, because I feared you would not like it) I do give a party--and even then a very simple one, only ask Manya and Barbara Vasilyevna! Everybody said I could not do less--and that it was absolutely necessary. And now it seems even a crime, for which I shall have to suffer disgrace. And not only disgrace. The worst of all is that you no longer love me! You love everyone else--the whole world, including that drunken Alexander Petrovich--but I still love you and cannot live without you. Why do you do it? Why? [Weeps]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. But you don't even wish to understand my life; my spiritual life. MARY IVANOVNA. I do wish to understand it, but I can't. I see that your Christianity has made you hate your family and hate me; but I don't understand why! NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. You see the others do understand! MARY IVANOVNA. Who? Alexander Petrovich, who gets money out of you? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. He and others: Tonya and Vasily Nikonorovich. But even if nobody understood it, that would make no difference. MARY IVANOVNA. Vasily Nikonorovich has repented, and has got his living back, and Tonya is at this very moment dancing and flirting with Styopa. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. I am sorry to hear it, but it does not turn black into white, and it cannot change my life. Mary! You do not need me. Let me go! I have tried to share your life and to bring into it what for me constitutes the whole of life; but it is impossible. It only results in torturing myself and you. I not only torment myself, but spoil the work I try to accomplish. Everybody, including that very Alexander Petrovich, has the right to tell me that I am a hypocrite; that I talk but do not act! That I preach the Gospel of poverty while I live in luxury, pretending that I have given up everything to my wife! MARY IVANOVNA. So you are ashamed of what people say? Really, can't you rise above that? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. It's not that I am ashamed (though I am ashamed), but that I am spoiling God's work. MARY IVANOVNA. You yourself often say that it fulfils itself despite man's opposition; but that's not the point. Tell me, what do you want of me? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Haven't I told you? MARY IVANOVNA. But, Nicholas, you know that that is impossible. Only think, Lyuba is now getting married; Vanya is entering the university; Missy and Katya are studying. How can I break all that off? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Then what am I to do? MARY IVANOVNA. Do as you say one should do: have patience, love. Is it too hard for you? Only bear with us and do not take yourself from us! Come, what is it that torments you? [Enter Vanya running.] VANYA. Mamma, they are calling you! MARY IVANOVNA. Tell them I can't come. Go, go! VANYA. Do come! [He runs off]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. You don't wish to see eye to eye--nor to understand me. MARY IVANOVNA. It is not that I don't wish to, but that I can't. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. No, you don't wish to, and we drift further and further apart. Only enter into my feelings; put yourself for a moment in my place, and you will understand. First, the whole life here is thoroughly depraved. You are vexed with the expression, but I can give no other name to a life built wholly on robbery; for the money you live on is taken from the land you have stolen from the peasants. Moreover, I see that this life is demoralising the children: "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble," and I see how they are perishing and becoming depraved before my very eyes. I cannot bear it when grown-up men dressed up in swallow-tail coats serve us as if they were slaves. Every dinner we have is a torture to me. MARY IVANOVNA. But all this was so before. Is it not done by everyone--both here and abroad? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. But _I_ can't do it. Since I realised that we are all brothers, I cannot see it without suffering. MARY IVANOVNA. That is as you please. One can invent anything. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [hotly] It's just this want of understanding that is so terrible. Take for instance to-day! I spent this morning at RzhAnov's lodging-house, among the outcasts there; and I saw an infant literally die of hunger; a boy suffering from alcoholism; and a consumptive charwoman rinsing clothes outside in the cold. Then I returned home, and a footman with a white tie opens the door for me. I see my son--a mere lad--ordering that footman to fetch him some water; and I see the army of servants who work for us. Then I go to visit Boris--a man who is sacrificing his life for truth's sake. I see how he, a pure, strong, resolute man, is deliberately being goaded to lunacy and to destruction, that the Government may be rid of him! I know, and they know, that his heart is weak, and so they provoke him, and drag him to a ward for raving lunatics. It is too dreadful, too dreadful. And when I come home, I hear that the one member of our family who understood--not me but the truth--has thrown over both her betrothed to whom she had promised her love, and the truth, and is going to marry a lackey, a liar ... MARY IVANOVNA. How very Christian! NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Yes, it is wrong of me, and I am to blame, but I only want you to put yourself in my place. I mean to say that she has turned from the truth ... MARY IVANOVNA. You say, "from the truth"; but other people--the majority--say from "an error." You see Vasily Nikonorovich once thought he was in error, but now has come back to the Church. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. That's impossible ---- MARY IVANOVNA. He has written to Lisa! She will show you the letter. That sort of conversion is very unstable. So also in Tonya's case; I won't even speak of that fellow Alexander Petrovich, who simply considers it profitable! NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [getting angry] Well, no matter. I only ask _you_ to understand me. I still consider that truth is truth! All this hurts me very much. And here at home I see a Christmas-tree, a ball, and hundreds of roubles being spent while men are dying of hunger. I cannot live so. Have pity on me, I am worried to death. Let me go! Good-bye. MARY IVANOVNA. If you go, I will go with you. Or if not with you, I will throw myself under the train you leave by; and let them all go to perdition--and Missy and Katya too. Oh my God, my God. What torture! Why? What for? [Weeps]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [at the door] Alexander Petrovich, go home! I am not going. [To his wife] Very well, I will stay. [Takes off his overcoat]. MARY IVANOVNA [embracing him] We have not much longer to live. Don't let us spoil everything after twenty-eight years of life together. Well, I'll give no more parties; but do not punish me so. [Enter Vanya and Katya running.] VANYA and KATYA. Mamma, be quick--come. MARY IVANOVNA. Coming, coming. So let us forgive one another! [Exit with Katya and Vanya]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. A child, a regular child; or a cunning woman? No, a cunning child. Yes, yes. It seems Thou dost not wish me to be Thy servant in this Thy work. Thou wishest me to be humiliated, so that everyone may point his finger at me and say, "He preaches, but he does not perform." Well, let them! Thou knowest best what Thou requirest: submission, humility! Ah, if I could but rise to that height! [Enter Lisa.] LISA. Excuse me. I have brought you a letter from Vasily Nikonorovich. It is addressed to me, but he asks me to tell you. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Can it be really true? LISA. Yes. Shall I read it? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Please do. LISA [reading] "I write to beg you to communicate this to Nicholas IvAnovich. I greatly regret the error which led me openly to stray from the Holy Orthodox Church, to which I rejoice to have now returned. I hope you and Nicholas Ivanovich will follow the same path. Please forgive me!" NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. They have tortured him into this, poor fellow. But still it is terrible. LISA. I also came to tell you that the Princess is here. She came upstairs to me in a dreadfully excited state and is determined to see you. She has just been to see Boris. I think you had better not see her. What good can it do for her to see you? NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. No. Call her in. Evidently this is fated to be a day of dreadful torture. LISA. Then I'll go and call her. [Exit]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [alone] Yes--could I but remember that life consists only in serving Thee; and that if Thou sendest a trial, it is because Thou holdest me capable of enduring it, and knowest that my strength is equal to it: else it would not be a trial.... Father, help me--help me to do Thy will. [Enter Princess.] PRINCESS. You receive me? You do me that honour? My respects to you. I don't give you my hand, for I hate you and despise you. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. What has happened? PRINCESS. Just this, that they are moving him to the Disciplinary Battalion; and it is you who are the cause of it. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Princess, if you want anything, tell me what it is; but if you have come here merely to abuse me, you only injure yourself. You cannot offend me, for with my whole heart I sympathise with you and pity you! PRINCESS. What charity! What exalted Christianity! No, Mr. Saryntsov, you cannot deceive me! We know you now. You have ruined my son, but you don't care; and you go giving balls; and your daughter--my son's betrothed--is to be married and make a good match, that you approve of; while you pretend to lead a simple life, and go carpentering. How repulsive you are to me, with your new-fangled Pharisaism. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Don't excite yourself so, Princess. Tell me what you have come for--surely it was not simply to scold me? PRINCESS. Yes, that too! I must find vent for all this accumulated pain. But what I want is this: He is being removed to the Disciplinary Battalion, and I cannot bear it. It is you who have done it. You! You! You! NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Not I, but God. And God knows how sorry I am for you. Do not resist this will. He wants to test you. Bear the trial meekly. PRINCESS. I cannot bear it meekly. My whole life was wrapped up in my son; and you have taken him from me and ruined him. I cannot be calm. I have come to you--it is my last attempt to tell you that you have ruined him and that it is for you to save him. Go and prevail on them to set him free. Go and see the Governor-General, the Emperor, or whom you please. It is your duty to do it. If you don't do it, I know what I shall do. You will have to answer to me for it! NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Teach me what to do. I am ready to do anything. PRINCESS. I again repeat it--you must save him! If you do not--beware! Good-bye. [Exit]. [Nicholas Ivanovich (alone). Lies down on sofa. Silence. The door opens and the dance music sounds louder. Enter Styopa.] STYOPA. Papa is not here, come in! [Enter the adults and the children, dancing in couples.] LYUBA [noticing Nicholas Ivanovich] Ah, you _are_ here. Excuse us. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH [rising] Never mind. [Exit dancing couples]. NICHOLAS IVANOVICH. Vasily Nikonorovich has recanted. I have ruined Boris. Lyuba is getting married. Can it be that I have been mistaken? Mistaken in believing in Thee? No! Father help me! [Curtain.] _ |
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