Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy

Author:Leo Tolstoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141961064
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

26 • DISCUSSIONS

Volodya, lying with his feet up on the sofa and leaning his head on his arm, was reading a French novel when I paid my usual visit tohis room after my evening studies. He raised his head for a second to glance at me and resumed his reading – a most simple and natural movement but one which caused me to blush. His glance seemed to inquire why I had come, and I construed the quick lowering of his head into a wish to conceal from me the meaning of his glance. This tendency to attribute a meaning to the simplest movement was characteristic of me at that period. I went to the table and picked up a book too but, before beginning to read, it occurred to me how ridiculous it was that we should not exchange a word when we had not seen each other all day.

‘Will you be at home this evening?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, seeing that the conversation flagged before it started, and began to read.

Oddly enough, Volodya and I could spend hours on end without speaking if we were alone together but the presence of a third person, even a taciturn one, was enough to set us going on the most interesting and varied discussions. We felt that we knew each other too well. And to know a person either too well or too little acts as a bar to intimacy.

‘Is Volodya at home?’ we heard Dubkov’s voice in the hall.

‘Yes,’ said Volodya, putting his feet down and laying his book on the table.

Dubkov and Nekhlyudov came in wearing overcoats and hats.

‘What do you say, Volodya, shall we go to the theatre?’

‘No, I can’t spare the time,’ said Volodya, turning red.

‘Oh, what stuff! Do let’s go.’

‘Anyway, I haven’t a ticket.’

‘You can get as many tickets as you like at the door.’

‘Wait, I’ll be back in a minute,’ replied Volodya evasively, and jerking his shoulder he left the room.

I knew Volodya was very keen to go to the theatre as Dubkov suggested and that he was refusing simply because he had no money; and that now he had gone to ask the butler to lend him five roubles till he received his next allowance.

‘How are you, diplomat?’ asked Dubkov, giving me his hand.

Volodya’s friends called me ‘diplomat’ because once after dinner when they were there grandmamma had happened to say, speaking about our futures, that Volodya would go into the army but that she hoped to see me a diplomat in a black dress-coat with my hair done à la coq, the two essential requirements in her opinion of the diplomatic service.

‘Where has Volodya gone?’ Nekhlyudov asked me.

‘I don’t know, ‘I replied, blushing at the thought that they probably guessed why Volodya had left the room.

‘I expect he hasn’t any money. Am I right? Oh you diplomat,’ he added, interpreting my smile as an affirmative. ‘I haven’t any money either. Have you, Dubkov?’

‘Let’s see,’ said Dubkov, taking out his purse and very carefully feeling the few small coins with his squat little fingers.

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