"All life long one song," he said, "and yet jealous. Man has a thousand
songs in his heart and is yet blamed for jealousy; is it fair?" He
spoke musingly, as though asking himself questions. "There are moments
when a man says to a woman more than she ought to know about him. He
speaks and forgets, but she remembers. Perhaps jealousy comes from the
fear of degrading one's soul, of being humiliated and ridiculous? Not
that a woman is dangerous who holds a man by his ... but she who holds
him by his soul...."
When I pointed out the contradiction in this with his "Kreutzer
Sonata," the radiance of a sudden smile beamed through his beard, and
he said:
"I am not a chaffinch."
In the evening, while walking, he suddenly said: "Man survives
earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of
the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is,
and will be--the tragedy of the bedroom."
Saying this, he smiled triumphantly: at times he has the broad, calm
smile of a man who has overcome something extremely difficult or from
whom some sharp, long-gnawing pain has lifted suddenly. Every thought
burrows into his soul like a tick; he either tears it out at once or
allows it to have its fill of his blood, and then, when full, it just
drops off of itself.
* * * * *
He read to Suler and me a variant of the scene of the fall of "Father
Sergius"--a merciless scene. Suler pouted and fidgeted uneasily.
"What's the matter? Don't you like it?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked.
"It's too brutal, as though from Dostoevsky. She is a filthy girl,
and her breasts like pancakes, and all that. Why didn't he sin with a
beautiful, healthy woman?"
"That would be sin without justification; as it is, there is
justification in pity for the girl. Who could desire her as she is?"
"I cannot make it out...."
"There's a great deal, Liovushka, which you can't make out: you're not
shrewd...."
There came in Andrey Lvovitch's wife, and the conversation was
interrupted. As she and Suler went out, Leo Nicolayevitch said to me:
"Leopold is the purest man I know. He is like that: if he did something
bad, it would be out of pity for someone."