The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Childhood/Chapter 8
VIII.
Games
The hunt was ended. A rug was spread in the shade of young birch-trees, and the whole company seated themselves on it. Butler Gavrílo had stamped down the juicy green grass around him, and was wiping the plates and taking out of a box plums and peaches that were wrapped in leaves. The sun shone through the green branches of the birches, and cast round, quivering bits of light on the patterns of the rug, on my feet, and even on the bald, perspiring head of Gavrílo. A light breeze that blew through the leafage of the trees, and over my hair and perspiring face, greatly refreshed me.
When we had received our shares of ice-cream and fruit, there was nothing else to do on the rug, and we arose, in spite of the burning, oblique rays of the sun, and went away to play.
"Well, what shall it be?" said Lyúbochka, blinking from the sun and hopping about on the grass. "Let us play Robinson."
"No, that is tiresome," said Volódya, lazily throwing himself on the grass and chewing at some leaves, "that everlasting Robinson! If you want to play something, let us rather build an arbour."
Volódya evidently was playing the great gentleman: he, no doubt, was proud of having come on a hunter's horse, and he pretended he was very tired. But, on the other hand, he may have had too much common sense and too little imagination to take complete enjoyment in the game of Robinson. The game consisted in performing scenes from the "Swiss Family Robinson," which we had lately read.
"Well, why, pray, do you not want to give us that pleasure?" insisted the girls. "You may be Charles, or Ernest, or the father, — whichever you wish," said Kátenka, trying to raise him from the ground by the sleeve of his blouse.
"Really, I don't feel like it, it is tiresome!" said Volódya, stretching himself and at the same time smiling with self-satisfaction.
"I should have preferred to stay at home, if nobody wants to play," said Lyúbochka, through tears.
She was a great blubberer.
"Well, let us have it; only, please, stop weeping, — I can't bear it!"
Volódya's condescension gave us very little pleasure; on the contrary, his lazy and weary look destroyed all the charm of the game. When we seated ourselves on the ground and, imagining that we were rowing out to catch fish, began to row with all our might, Volódya sat down with crossed arms and in a pose which had nothing in common with the attitude of a fisherman. I told him so; but he answered that we should gain nothing from swinging our arms more or less, and that we should not get far away anyhow. I involuntarily agreed with him. When I imagined that, holding a stick over my shoulder, I was going into the woods to hunt, Volódya lay flat on his back, with his hands behind his head, and told me that he was going there too. Such actions and words cooled our zest for the game, and were extremely unpleasant, the more so since, in reality, we could not help admitting that Volódya acted wisely.
I know myself that with a stick it is not possible to kill a bird, or even to shoot at all. That is only a game. But if one were to judge that way, it would not even be possible to ride on chairs; and yet, Volódya himself remembers, I think, how in the long winter evenings we used to cover an armchair with a cloth, and make a carriage of it; one took the coachman's seat, another the lackey's, the girls were in the middle, three stools were the three horses, — and we started off on the road. And what different kinds of accidents used to happen on that road, and how merrily and swiftly those winter evenings passed away! To judge by what was going on now, there would be no game. And if there were to be no game, what, then, would be left?