The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 15
XV.
"During all the time of my married life I never stopped experiencing pangs of jealousy. But there were certain periods when I suffered more than usual from it. One such period was when, after the first babe, the doctors forbade her to nurse it. I was especially jealous during that time, in the first place, because my wife was experiencing that unrest, peculiar to mothers, which produces a causeless violation of the regular order of life; and, in the second, because, seeing how easily she rejected the moral obligation of mothers, I justly, though unconsciously, concluded that it would be just as easy for her to violate her marital life, the more so since she was quite well and, in spite of the prohibition of the charming doctors, later nursed her own children, and brought up healthy children."
"I see you do not like doctors," I said, noticing an especially malignant expression of his voice every time he mentioned them.
"It is not a question of likes and dislikes. They have ruined my life, as they have ruined the lives of thousands, of hundreds of thousands, without my being able to connect the consequences with the cause. I understand that they want to make money, just like the lawyers and others, and I should gladly have given up to them half of my income, and everybody else, understanding what they are doing, would gladly give up to them half of their possessions, if they only would not interfere with your domestic life, and never came up close to you. I have not been collecting information, but I know dozens of cases—there are plenty of them—where they have killed either the child in the mother's womb, averring that the mother could not bring forth the child, although later the mother has borne children without difficulty, or have killed the mothers, under the pretext of some operation. Nobody counts these murders, just as they did not count the murders of the Inquisition, because they were supposed to be for the good of humanity. It is impossible to count all the crimes which are committed by them. But all these crimes are nothing in comparison with that moral materialistic decadence which they introduce into the world, especially through the women.
"I shall leave out of account the fact that, if one were to follow their instructions, people would have to tend, on account of ever present infections in everything and everywhere, not to union but to disunion; according to their injunctions, people ought to sit in solitude, without letting an atomizer with carbolic acid out of their mouths (however, they have discovered that even this is of no avail). But this is nothing. The chief poison lies in the corruption of men, especially of women.
"Nowadays one must not say: 'You are not living well, you must live better.' One can't say that to himself, nor to any one else. And if you are living badly, the cause of it is the abnormality of the nerve functions, or something of the kind. And you have to go to them, and they will prescribe thirty-five kopeks' worth of medicine from the apothecary's, and you have to take it!
"You will grow worse, then take more medicine, and go again to the doctor. It is very clever!
"But that is another matter. I only wish to say that she had not the slightest difficulty in nursing her children, and that this pregnancy and nursing alone saved me from the torments of jealousy. If it had not been for this, it would all have happened before. The children saved me and her. In eight years she bore five children, and she nursed them all but the first herself."
"Where are your children now?" I asked.
"The children?" he repeated the question, with an expression of terror.
"Excuse me, maybe this is too painful for you?"
"No, not at all. My wife's sister and her brother have taken them. They did not give them to me. I have given them my estate, but they did not give them up to me. I am something like a lunatic according to them. I am now leaving them. I saw them, but they will not let me have then, because I should educate them to be different from their parents, whereas it is necessary for them to be like them. Well, what is to be done? Of course they will not let me have them, and they will not trust me. Besides, I do not know whether I should have strength enough to bring them up. I think not. I am a ruin, a cripple. There is just one thing in me I know. Yes. this much is certain: I know that which others will not know so soon.
"Yes, the children are alive and growing up to be just such savages as all around them are. I have seen them, I have seen them three times. I can do nothing for them, nothing. I am now travelling south, to my home: I have a cottage and garden there.
"Yes, it will be a long time before people will find out that which I know. It is easy enough to find out how much iron and what metals there are in the sun and stars; but it is hard, dreadfully hard, to comprehend that which casts any aspersions on our swinishness!
"I am thankful to you for being willing to listen to me.