The Awakening (The Resurrection). Лев Толстой

the stairs.

      The day began to break, but the sun was yet beyond the horizon. The people seated themselves on the grass around the church-yard, but Katiousha remained in the church, and Nekhludoff waited on the porch for her appearance.

      The crowd was still pouring out of the church, their hob-nailed shoes clattering against the stone pavement, and spread about the cemetery.

      An old man, confectioner to Maria Ivanovna, stopped Nekhludoff and kissed him, and his wife, an old woman with a wrinkled Adam's apple under a silk 'kerchief, unrolled a yellow saffron egg from her handkerchief and gave it to him. At the same time a young, smiling and muscular peasant, in a new caftan, approached.

      "Christ has risen!" he said, with smiling eyes and, nearing Nekhludoff, spread around him a peculiar, pleasant, peasant odor, and, tickling him with his curly beard, three times kissed him on the lips.

      While Nekhludoff was thus exchanging the customary kisses with the peasant and taking from him a dark-brown egg, he noticed the chatoyant dress of Matriena Pavlovna and the lovely head with the red bow.

      No sooner did she catch sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, than her face brightened up.

      On reaching the porch they also stopped, distributing alms. One of the beggars, with a red, cicatrized slough instead of a nose, approached Katiousha. She produced some coins from her handkerchief, gave them to him, and without the slightest expression of disgust, but, on the contrary, her eyes beaming with delight, kissed him three times. While she was thus kissing with the beggar, her eyes met those of Nekhludoff, and she seemed to ask him: "Is it not right? Is it not proper?"

      "Yes, yes, darling; it is right; everything is beautiful. I love you."

      As they descended the stairs he came near her. He did not wish to kiss her, but merely wished to be by her side.

      "Christ has risen!" said Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended her lips.

      "He has risen, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed each other.

      He turned to look at Katiousha. She flushed and at the same moment approached him.

      "Christ has risen, Dmitri Ivanovich."

      "He has risen, indeed," he said. They kissed each other twice, and seemed to be reflecting whether or not it was necessary to kiss a third time, and having decided, as it were, that it was necessary, they kissed again.

      "Will you go to the priest?" asked Nekhludoff.

      "No, we will stay here, Dmitri Ivanovich," answered Katiousha, laboriously, as though after hard, pleasant exertion, breathing with her full breast and looking straight in his eyes, with her submissive, chaste, loving and slightly squinting eyes.

      There is a point in the love between man and woman when that love reaches its zenith; when it is free from consciousness, reason and sensuality. Such a moment arrived for Nekhludoff that Easter morn.

      Now, whenever he thought of Katiousha, her appearance at that moment obscured every other recollection of her. The dark, smooth, resplendent head; the white dress with folds clinging to her graceful bust and undulating breast; those vermilion cheeks, those brilliant black eyes, and two main traits in all her being: the virgin purity of her love, not only for himself, but for everything and everybody—he knew it—not only the good and beautiful, but even that beggar whom she had kissed.

      He knew that she possessed that love, because that night and that morning he felt it within him, and felt that in that love his soul mingled into one with hers.

      Ah, if that feeling had continued unchanged! "Yes, that awful affair occurred after that notable commemoration of Christ's resurrection!" he thought now, sitting at the window of the jury-room.

CHAPTER XVI.

       Table of Contents

      Returning from the church, Nekhludoff broke his fast with the aunts, and to repair his strength, drank some brandy and wine—a habit he acquired in the army—and going to his room immediately fell asleep with his clothes on. He was awakened by a rap at the door. By the rap he knew that it was she, so he rose, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.

      "Is it you, Katiousha? Come in," he said, rising.

      She opened the door.

      "You are wanted to breakfast," she said. She was in the same white dress, but without the bow in her hair.

      As she looked in his eyes she brightened up, as if she had announced something unusually pleasant.

      "I shall come immediately," he answered, taking a comb to rearrange his hair.

      She lingered for a moment. He noticed it, and putting down the comb, he moved toward her. But at the same moment she quickly turned and walked off with her customary light and agile step along the narrow mat of the corridor.

      "What a fool I am!" Nekhludoff said to himself. "Why did I not detain her?" And he ran after her.

      He did not know himself what he wished of her, but it seemed to him that when she entered his room he ought to have done something that any one in his place would have done, but which he failed to do.

      "Wait, Katiousha," he said.

      She looked around.

      "What is it?" she said, stopping.

      "Nothing. I only——"

      With some effort he overcame his shyness, and remembering how people generally act in such a case, he put his arm about Katiousha's waist.

      She stopped and looked in his eyes.

      "Don't, Ivanovich, don't," she said, blushing until her eyes filled with tears. Then with her rough, strong hands she removed his arm.

      Nekhludoff released her, and for a moment felt not only awkward and ashamed, but seemed odious to himself. He should have believed in himself, but he failed to understand that this awkwardness and shame were the noblest feelings of his soul begging for recognition, and, on the contrary, it seemed to him that it was his foolishness that was speaking within him, that he ought to have done as everybody does in a similar case.

      He overtook her again, again embraced her and kissed her on the neck. This kiss was entirely unlike the other two kisses. The first was given unconsciously, behind the lilac bush; the second, in the morning in church. The last one was terrible, and she felt it.

      "But what are you doing?" she exclaimed in such a voice, as if he had irrecoverably destroyed something infinitely precious, and ran away from him.

      He went to the dining-room. His aunts in holiday attire, the doctor and a neighbor were taking lunch standing. Everything was as usual, but a storm raged in Nekhludoff's soul. He did not understand what was said to him, his answers were inappropriate, and he was thinking only of Katiousha, recalling the sensation of the last kiss he gave her when he overtook her in the corridor. He could think of nothing else. When she entered the room, without looking at her, he felt her presence with all his being, and had to make an effort not to look at her.

      After lunch he went immediately to his room, and in great agitation walked to and fro, listening to the sounds in the house and waiting to hear her steps. The animal man that dwelled in him not only raised his head, but crushed under foot the spiritual man that he was when he first arrived at the manor, and was even this very morning in church, and that terrible animal man now held sway in his soul. Although Nekhludoff was watching an opportunity to meet Katiousha that day, he did not succeed in seeing her face to face even once. She was probably avoiding him. But in the evening it happened that she had to enter a room adjoining his. The physician was to remain over night, and Katiousha had to make the bed for him. Hearing her steps, Nekhludoff,