During a game of skittles, Guskof, a cashiered officer who now lives with the adjutant, comes to the prince, who seems faintly to recollect having met him before. After some general conversation, the officers retire for either sleep or gambling, leaving the prince and Guskof alone. Upon being asked if they had not met before, Guskof reminds the prince of their having met at the home of Guskof’s sister in Moscow, and this leads to further reminiscences.
During a long walk that night, Guskof, who constantly by his own story exhibits his weakness of character, tells how he once was of the highest society of St. Petersburg, but had been—through a liaison and a resulting duel—put under arrest and later cashiered. But this weakness is further shown when he goes on to lament his treatment at the hands of other officers with whom he comes in contact. He expresses a feeling of great disgust at their mode of spending their leisure hours. He admits that he is a moral coward—which is proven later. At length, after further conversation, which inspires a mixed feeling of disgust and pity in the prince, Guskof borrows from him some money. Suddenly, the bursting of a shell causes Guskof to cringe in abject terror, and in the confusion he disappears, but later is seen by the prince in a tent offering in a maudlin voice the money which he had borrowed, and boasting of how “his friend the prince” was rich, and how he had just gotten ten rubles from him.
Perhaps the pity of life, and the tragic results of its sins, are nowhere more piercingly set forth than in Tolstoi’s short-story “Korney Vasiliev”—structurally, his most perfect little fiction, for generally situation rather than plot makes the stronger appeal to our author.
Korney, a well-to-do merchant, after a temporary absence, is returning to his home. While en route, Kuzma, his driver, tells him that Martha, Korney’s wife, has taken a new workman in the house—Yevstiquey, her former lover, and that she is again living with him. The affair, says Kuzma, is the talk of the village.
Korney does not know whether to believe the unreliable Kuzma, but on arriving home sets out to find out for himself. He distributes the presents he had brought back with him—one for his little daughter Agatha, one for his son Theodore, one for his wife, and so on. At bedtime, no longer able to restrain himself, he blurts out his suspicions to his wife, who first ridicules them, but finally, under her husband’s blows, admits their truth, and spitefully suggests that little Agatha is not a child of Korney’s, but of Yevstiquey’s. The child, coming into the room, is brutally used by him—her arm being broken. At the end of this violent scene, Korney leaves his home.
After seventeen years, now a broken old man, Korney is returning home, begging his way. After he left his wife he had taken to drink, spent all his money, and, being unreliable, no one would keep him long at work. The idea takes hold of him that it is his wife who has been the cause of all his misery, and his one thought is, before she dies, to go to her and show her what she has made of him. He is very weak, but manages to make his way to a village, where a kindly young peasant woman, seeing his plight, takes him in for the night and gives him food, drink, and shelter. Noticing that she has a lame arm, he mentions it, and the fact is revealed that she is Agatha, in whose eyes he recognizes Yevstiquey. He breaks down, but does not reveal himself, though in his heart he is sorry for what he did to the girl.
In the morning he trudges on toward his wife’s village. He knocks on the door, and a woman comes out. He recognizes his wife, but how old and haggard she has grown—she who had been so beautiful and so strong! And all the resentment vanishes from his heart, and in its place springs up a terrible pity. Everything else about the place seems also to have undergone change. Even after he says appealingly, “Martha, let us die together!” she still pretends not to recognize him, takes him for a tramp, and tells him to go from the door. However, his son Theodore—an image of his father when he was young—takes pity on the old man, not knowing who he is, and, angry at his mother for her unkindness, brings to the old man some black bread. The father is touched, and, even weaker than he was, drags himself back to Agatha’s village and begs for shelter, which is given him.
In the meantime, Martha’s conscience gives her no peace, and, learning what direction old Korney has taken, she follows. Arrived at her daughter’s house, she finds a crowd there mourning the old man, who has died, and from his dignified old face she does not know whether he had forgiven her or not.
The story that follows in translation is one of the most representative of all the Russian’s shorter work. It speaks its own praises.