Tuesday, August 14th, 2012
Childhood. Boyhood. Youth
Childhood. Boyhood. Youth
By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by C.J. Hogarth
I -- THE TUTOR, KARL IVANITCH
On the 12th of August, 18-- (just three days after my tenth birthday,
when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven
o'clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my
head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so
roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken
back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out
from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand,
flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with
sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown
fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red
knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went
on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.
'Suppose,' I thought to myself, 'that I am only a small boy, yet why
should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda's
bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so
he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long--how to tease
me. He knows very well that he has woken me up and frightened me, but he
pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and
cap and tassel too--they are all of them disgusting.'
While I was thus inwardly venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had
passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in
a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail,
then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned round to
us.
'Get up, children! It is quite time, and your mother is already in the
drawing-room,' he exclaimed in his strong German accent. Then he crossed
over to me, sat down at my feet, and took his snuff-box out of his
pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanitch sneezed, wiped his
nose, flicked his fingers, and began amusing himself by teasing me and
tickling my toes as he said with a smile, 'Well, well, little lazy one!'
For all my dread of being tickled, I determined not to get out of bed
or to answer him, but hid my head deeper in the pillow, kicked out with
all my strength, and strained every nerve to keep from laughing.
'How kind he is, and how fond of us!' I thought to myself. 'Yet to think
that I could be hating him so just now!'
I felt angry, both with myself and with Karl Ivanitch, I wanted to laugh
and to cry at the same time, for my nerves were all on edge.
'Leave me alone, Karl!' I exclaimed at length, with tears in my eyes, as
I raised my head from beneath the bed-clothes.
Karl Ivanitch was taken aback. He left off tickling my feet, and asked
me kindly what the matter was. Had I had a disagreeable dream? His good
German face and the sympathy with which he sought to know the cause
of my tears made them flow the faster. I felt conscience-stricken, and
could not understand how, only a minute ago, I had been hating Karl,
and thinking his dressing-gown and cap and tassel disgusting. On the
contrary, they looked eminently lovable now. Even the tassel seemed
another token of his goodness. I replied that I was crying because I had
had a bad dream, and had seen Mamma dead and being buried. Of course it
was a mere invention, since I did not remember having dreamt anything
at all that night, but the truth was that Karl's sympathy as he tried to
comfort and reassure me had gradually made me believe that I HAD dreamt
