CZM Book Club: After the Dance by Leo Tolstoy

Margaret reads you a story about what it takes to break from society in disgust. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colson Media book Club book Club book Club. Hello, and
welcome to the Closlone Media book Club, the only book
club where you don't have to do the reading because
I do the reading for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and every week I bring you stories. And this week
you're gonna be so surprised about what I'm going to do.

(00:23):
I'm going to bring you a story. This story is
by Tolstoy, that's right, the most famous author, guy who
no one actually reads. I mean some people read. He
rise very long books and they're very Russian. And I
decided to read the story because I just finished reading
a bunch of stories by mcgone, the Mexican anarchist, and

(00:45):
I was like, I think I'm going to do some
like anarchist fiction as a kick. And Tolstoy's an interesting character.
He's often seen as the sort of founder of Christian anarchism,
and whenever he comes up in like every history episode
that I do, if it's vaguely related to Eastern Europe
or in Russia in particular. But I haven't actually done
as much of a deep dive on him in particular

(01:07):
as I would like to, partly because I suspect he
was actually kind of a terrible person, but I don't know,
because I haven't done it yet. And I like reading
these stories not because I'm like, this is the way
that we should all think about politics, but instead as
ways of understanding, like this is the way that some
people were thinking about politics. These are influential ways of

(01:28):
understanding ideas. And the thing about mcgaughone that we read
in the last two weeks is that he wrote a
fair amount, but his primary thing was that he was
a revolutionary, not that he was a writer, and in
particular a writer of fiction. Although again he wrote a
fair amount of fiction, but they're very simple and direct stories,
and that doesn't make them worse or better. But Tolstoy

(01:50):
is like a writer, and he's like a writer's writer
and stuff, and so I thought it'd be an interesting
comparison to make this particular story. It's called After the Dance.
It's also translated as After the Ball. It was written
in nineteen oh three, and it wasn't unpublished. It wasn't
published until nineteen eleven. He died in nineteen ten, so
this is published posthumously, and so it's set well after

(02:14):
he's written the books that have made him famous. Anyway,
this story, and you say that a man cannot of
himself understand what is good and evil, that it is
all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I
believe it is all chance. Take my own case. Thus

(02:36):
spoke our excellent friend Ivan Vasilovitch, after a conversation between
us on the impossibility of improving individual character without a
change of conditions under which men live. Nobody had actually
said that one could not of oneself understand good and evil.
But it was a habit of Ivan Vasilovitch to answer

(02:56):
in this way the thoughts aroused in his own mind
by conversation, and to illustrate those thoughts by relating incidents
in his own life. He often quite forgot the reason
for his story in telling it, but he always told
it with great sincerity and feeling. He did so. Now
take my own case. My whole life was molded not

(03:18):
by environment, but by something quite different. By what. Then
we asked, Oh, that is a long story. I should
have to tell you about a great many things to
make you understand well. Tell us. Then, ivan Vasilovitch thought
a little and shook his head. My whole life, he said,
was changed in one night, or rather mourning why what happened?

(03:43):
One of us asked, what happened was that I was
very much in love. I have been in love many times,
but this was the most serious of all. It is
a thing of the past. She has married daughters now.
It was Varenka b ivan Vasilov mentioned her surname. Even
at fifty she is remarkably handsome, But in her youth,

(04:05):
at eighteen, she was exquisite, tall, slender, graceful, and stately. Yes,
stately is the word. She held herself very erect by instinct,
as it were, and carried her head high, and that,
together with her beauty and height, gave her a queenly
air in spite of being thin, even bony. One might say,

(04:25):
it might indeed have been deterring had it not been
for her smile, which was always gay and cordial, and
for the charming light in her eyes, and for her
youthful sweetness. What an entrancing description you give ivan Vassilovitch description. Indeed,
I could not possibly describe her so that you could

(04:46):
appreciate her. But that does not matter. What I am
going to tell you happened in the forties. I was
at the time a student in a provincial university. I
don't know whether it was a good thing or no.
But we had no political clubs, no theory in our universities.
Then we were simply young and spent our time as
young men do, studying and amusing ourselves. I was a

(05:08):
very gay, lively, careless fellow, and had plenty of money too.
I had a fine horse and used to go to
boggaining with the young ladies. Skating had not yet come
into fashion. I went to drinking parties with my comrades.
In those days we drank nothing but champagne. If we
had no champagne, we drank nothing at all. We never

(05:29):
drank vodka as they do now. Evening parties and balls
were my favorite amusements. I danced well, and I was
not an ugly fellow. Come, there is no need to
be modest interrupted a lady near him. We have seen
your photograph. Not ugly. Indeed, you are a handsome fellow.
Handsome if you like, that does not matter. When my

(05:53):
love for her was at its strongest on the last
day of the carnival, I was at a ball at
the Provincial Marshals. A good natured old man, rich and hospitable,
and a court chamberlain. The guests were welcomed by his wife,
who was as good natured as himself. She was dressed
in puce colored velvet and had a diamond diadem on

(06:13):
her forehead, and her plump, old white shoulders and bosom
were bare, like the portraits of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter
of Peter the Great. It was a delightful ball. It
was a splendid room with a gallery for the orchestra,
which was famous at the time, and consisted of serfs
belonging to a musical landowner. The refreshments were magnificent, and

(06:34):
the champagne flowed in rivers. Though I was fond of
the champagne, I did not drink that night, because without
it I was drunk with love. But I made up
for it by dancing waltzes and polkas till I was
ready to drop, of course, whenever possible. With Varenka, she
wore a white dress with a pink sash, white shoes,

(06:55):
and white kid gloves which did not quite reach to
her thin pointed elbow. A disgusting engineer named Anaismov robbed
me of the marazuka with her to this day I
cannot forgive him. He asked her for the dance the
minute she arrived, and while I had driven to the
hairdressers to get a pair of gloves and was late.

(07:16):
So I did not dance the Mazurka with her, but
with a German girl to whom I had previously paid
a little attention. But I am afraid I did not
behave very politely to her that evening. I hardly spoke
or looked at her, and saw nothing but the tall,
slendid figure in a white dress with a pink sash,
a flushed, beaming, dimpled face, and sweet kind eyes. I

(07:39):
was not alone. They were all looking at her with admiration,
the men and women alike. Although she outshone all of them,
they could not help but admiring her. Although I was
not nominally her partner for the Mazurka, I did, as
a matter of fact, dance nearly the whole time with her.
She always came forward boldly the whole length of the

(08:00):
room to pick me out. I flew to meet her
without waiting to be chosen, and she thanked me with
a smile for my intuition. When I was brought up
to her with somebody else, and she guessed wrongly. She
took the other man's hand with a shrug of her
slim shoulders, and smiled at me regretfully, much like the
regret that you might feel if you don't take advantage

(08:23):
of pressing the skip forward several times button, or listening
to ads and buying stuff. And we're back Whenever there

(08:44):
was a waltz figure in the mazurka, I waltzed with
her for a long time, and breathing fast and smiling,
she would say, encore. And I went on waltzing and waltzing,
as though unconscious of any bodily existence. Come now, how
could you be unconscious of it? If your arm was
around her waist, you must have been conscious not only

(09:04):
of your own existence, but of hers, said one of
the party, Ivan Vassilovitch, cried out, almost shouting in anger.
There you are moderns all over. Nowadays you think of
nothing but the body. It was different in our day,
the more I was in love, the less corporeal she
was in my eyes. Nowadays you think of nothing but

(09:26):
the body. Nowadays you set legs, ankles, and I don't
know what you undressed the women you were in love
with in my eyes, as Alfonse Carr said, and he
was a good writer. The one I loved was always
draped in robes of bronze. We never thought of doing so.
We tried to veil her nakedness like Noah's good natured son.

(09:50):
Oh well, you can't understand. Don't pay attention to him,
go on, said one of them. Well, I danced for
the most part with her and did not notice how
time was passing. The musicians kept playing the same mazurka
tunes over and over again, in desperate exhaustion. You know
what it is. Towards the end of a ball, Papa's

(10:11):
and mamas were already getting up from the card tables
in the drawing room, and expectation of supper, the men
servants were running to and fro bringing in things. It
was nearly three o'clock. I had to make the most
of the last minutes. I chose her again for the mazurka,
and for the hundredth time, we danced across the room

(10:31):
the quadrille. After supper is mine, I said, taking her
to her place. Of course, if I am not carried
off home, she said, with a smile, I won't give
you up, I said, give me my fan anyhow, she answered,
I am so sorry to part with it, I said,
handing her a cheap white fan. Well, here's something to

(10:52):
console you, she said, plucking a feather out of the
fan and giving it to me. I took the feather
and could only express my rapture and gratitude with my eyes.
I was not only pleased and gay, I was happy, delighted.
I was good. I was not myself but some being
not of this earth, knowing nothing of evil. I hid

(11:14):
the feather in my glove and stood there, unable to
tear myself away from her. Look they are urging father
to dance, she said to me, pointing to the tall,
stately figure of her father, a colonel with silver epulets,
who was standing in the doorway with some ladies. Varenka,
come here, exclaimed our hostess, and the lady with a

(11:35):
diamond fairron air with her shoulders like Elizabeth in a
loud voice. Varenka went to the door, and I followed her.
Persuade your father to dance the mazurka with me, Mancherie,
do please, Peter Vassilovitch, she said, turning to the colonel
Varenka's father was a very handsome, well preserved old man.

(11:56):
He had good color mustaches curled in the style of
Nikolas the First, and white whiskers which met the mustaches.
His hair was combed on to his forehead, and a
bright smile like his daughter's was on his lips. In
his eyes, he was splendidly set up, with a broad
military chest, on which he wore some decorations, and he

(12:18):
had powerful shoulders and long, slim legs. He was that
ultra military type produced by the discipline of Emperor Nicholas
the First. When we approached the door, the colonel was
just refusing to dance, saying that he had quite forgotten
how But at that instant he smiled, swung his arm
gracefully round to the left, drew his sword from its sheath,

(12:41):
handed it to an obliging young man who stood near,
and smoothed his suede glove on his right hand. Everything
must be done according to rule, he said, with a smile.
He took the hand of his daughter and stood one
quarter turned, waiting for the music. At the first sound
of the mazurka, he stamped one foot smartly through the

(13:02):
other forward, and at first slowly and smoothly, then buoyantly
and impetuously, with stamping of feet and clicking of boots,
his tall, imposing figure moved through the length of the room.
Varenka swayed gracefully beside him, rhythmically and easily, making her
steps short or long with her little feet and their
white satin slippers. All the people in the room followed

(13:27):
every movement of the couple. As for me, I not
only admired, I regarded them with enraptured sympathy. I was
particularly impressed with the old gentleman's boots. They were not
the modern pointed affairs, but were made of cheap leather,
square toed, and evidently built by the regimental cobbler in
order that his daughter might dress and go out in society.

(13:50):
He did not buy fashionable boots, but wore homemade ones,
I thought, and his square toes seemed to me most touching.
It was obvious that in his time he had been
a good dancer, but now he was too heavy and
his legs had not spring enough for all the beautiful
steps he tried to take. Still, he contrived to go

(14:10):
twice around the room, when at the end, standing with
legs apart. He suddenly clicked his feet together and felt
on one knee a bit heavily, and she danced gracefully
around him, smiling and adjusting her skirts, and the whole
room applauded. Rising with an effort, he tenderly took his
daughter's face between his hands. He kissed her on the forehead,
and brought her to me. Under the impression that I

(14:32):
was her partner for the Mazurka, I said, I was
not well. Never mind, just go around the room once
with her, he said, smiling kindly, as he replaced his
sword in the sheath. As the contents of the bottle
flow readily when the first drop has been poured, so
my love for Verenka seemed to set free the whole

(14:52):
force of loving within me. In surrounding her, it embraced
the world. I loved the hostess with her diet, him
and her shoulders, like Elizabeth and her husband, and her guests,
and her footman, even the engineer Anismov, who felt peevish
towards me. As for Varenka's father, with his homemade boots
and his kind smile, so like her own. I felt

(15:13):
a sort of tenderness for him. That was almost rapture.
After summer, I danced the promised quadrille with her, and
though I had been infinitely happy before, I grew still
happier with every moment. We did not speak of love.
I neither asked myself nor her whether she loved me.
It was quite enough to know that I loved her.

(15:34):
I had only one fear that something might come to
interfere with my great joy. When I went home and
began to undress for the night, I found it quite
out of the question. I held the little feather out
of her fan in my hand, and one of her gloves,
which she gave me when I helped her into the
carriage after her mother. Looking at these things, and without

(15:56):
closing my eyes, I could see her before me as
she was for an instant when she thought she had
to choose between two partners. She tried to guess what
kind of person was represented in me, and I could
hear her sweet voice as she said, pride, am I right,
and merrily gave me her hand. At supper, she took
the first sip from my glass of champagne, looking at

(16:17):
me over the rim with her caressing glance. But plainest
of all, I could see her as she danced with
her father, gliding along beside him and looking at the
admiring observers with pride and happiness. He and she were
united in my mind in one rush of pathetic tenderness.
And you know what else is awkward, like the way

(16:37):
that people in old timey describe things like this, cutting
to ads in the middle of a story that's also awkward.
And yet here we all are, and we're back. I

(17:01):
was living then with my brother, who has since died.
He disliked going out and never went to dances, and
besides he was busy preparing for his last university examinations
and was leading a very regular life. He was asleep.
I looked at him, his head buried in the pillow
and half covered with the quilt, and I affectionately pitied him,
pitying him for his ignorance of the bliss I was

(17:22):
experiencing our surf Patrushia had met me with a candle,
ready to undress me, but I sent him away. His
sleepy face and toussled hair seemed to me so touching.
Trying not to make a noise, I went to my
room on tiptoe and sat down on my bed. No,
I was too happy. I could not sleep, Besides, it

(17:43):
was too hot in the rooms. Without taking off my uniform,
I went quietly into the hall, put on my overcoat,
opened the front door, and stepped out into the street.
It was after four when I had left the ball.
Going home and stopping there a while had occupied two hours,
so by the time I went out it was dawn.
It was regular carnival weather, foggy, and the road full

(18:06):
of water soaked, snow just melting, and water dripping from
the eaves. Varenka's family lived on the edge of town,
near a large field, one end of which was a
parade ground. At the other end was a boarding school
for young ladies. I passed through our empty little street
and came to the main thoroughfare, where I met pedestrians

(18:27):
and sledges laden with wood, the runners grating the road.
The horses swung with regular paces beneath their shining yokes,
their backs covered with straw mats, and their heads wet
with rain, while the drivers in enormous boots splashed through
the mud beside the sledges. All of this, the very
horses themselves seemed to me stimulating and fascinating, full of suggestion.

(18:51):
When I approached the field near their house, I saw
at one end of it, in the direction of the
parade ground, something very huge and black. I heard sounds
of fife and drum proceeding from it. My heart had
been full of song, and I had heard an imagination
the tune of the mazurka. But this was very harsh music.

(19:11):
It was not pleasant. What can that be? I thought,
and went towards the sound by a slippery path through
the center of the field. Walking about a hundred paces,
I began to distinguish many black objects through the mist.
They were evidently soldiers. It is probably a drill, I thought,
So I went along in that direction, in company with

(19:32):
a blacksmith who wore a dirty coat and an apron,
and he was carrying something. He walked ahead of me.
As we approached the place, the soldiers in black uniforms
stood in two rows, facing each other, motionless, their guns
at rest. Behind them stood the fifes and drums incessantly
repeating the same unpleasant tune. What are they doing, I

(19:54):
asked the blacksmith, who halted at my side. A tartar
is being beaten through the ranks. For his attempt to dessert,
said the blacksmith in an angry tone, as he looked
intently at the far end of the line. I looked
in the same direction and saw between the files something
horrid approaching me. The thing that approached me was a
man stripped to the waist, fastened with cords to the

(20:16):
guns of two soldiers who were leading him. At his side,
an officer and overcoat and cap was walking, whose figure
had a familiar look. The victim advanced under the blows
that rained upon him from both sides, his whole body plunging,
his feet dragging through the snow. Now he threw himself backward,
and the subalterns who led him thrust him forward. Now

(20:39):
he fell forward, and they pulled him up short while
ever at his side marched the tall officer with firm
and nervous pace. It was Varenka's father, with his rosy
face and white mustache. At each stroke, the man, as
if a maze, turned his face, grimacing with pain, towards
the side whence the blow came, and, showing his white teeth,

(21:01):
repeated the same words over and over, but I could
only hear what the words were. When he came quite near.
He did not speak them. He sobbed them out. Brothers
have mercy on me, Brothers have mercy on me. But
the brothers had no mercy. And when the procession came
close to me, I saw how a soldier who stood

(21:22):
opposite me took a firm step forward, and, lifting his
stick with a whirr, brought it down upon the man's back.
The man plunged forward, but the subalterns pulled him back,
and another blow came down from the other side, then
from this side, and then from the other. The colonel
marched beside him, and, looking now at his feet and
now at the man, inhaled the air, puffed out his cheeks,

(21:45):
and breathed it out between his protruded lips. When they
passed the place where I stood, I caught a glimpse
between the two files of the back of the man
who was being punished. It was something so many colored, wet, red, unnatural,
that I could hardly believe it was a human body.
My God, muttered the blacksmith. The procession moved further away,

(22:07):
the blows continued to rain upon the writhing, falling creature.
The fifes shrilled, and the drums beat and the tall,
imposing figure of the colonel moved alongside the man, just
as before. Then, suddenly the colonel stopped and rapidly approached
a man in the ranks. I'll teach you to hit
him gently. I heard his furious voice say, will you

(22:29):
pat him like that? Will you? And I saw how
his strong hand in the suede glove struck the weak, bloodless,
terrified soldier from not bringing down his stick with sufficient
strength on the red neck of the tartar. Bring new sticks,
he cried, and looking round, he saw me, assuming an
air of not knowing me, and with a ferocious, angry frown,

(22:51):
he hastily turned away. I felt so utterly ashamed, I
didn't know where to look. It was as if I
had been detected in a disgraceful act. I dropped my
eyes and quickly hurried home. All the way I had
the drums beating and the fifes whistling in my ears,
and I heard the words brothers, have mercy on me?

(23:13):
Or will you pat him? Will you? My heart was
full of physical disgust that was almost sickness, so much
so that I halted several times on my way, where
I had the feeling that I was going to be
really sick from all the horrors that had possessed me
that night. I do not remember how I got home
and got to bed, but the moment I was about

(23:34):
to fall asleep, I heard and saw again all that
had happened, and I sprang up. Evidently he knows something
I do not know. I thought about the colonel. If
I knew what he knows, I should certainly grasp understand
what I have just seen, and it would not cause
me much suffering. But however much I thought about it,
I could not understand the thing that the Colonel knew.

(23:57):
It was evening before I could get to sleep, and
then only after calling on a friend and drinking till
I was quite drunk. Do you think I had come
to the conclusion that the deed I had witnessed was wicked? Oh? No,
Since it was done with such assurance and was recognized
by everyone as indispensable, they doubtless knew something which I
did not know. So I thought and tried to understand,

(24:20):
but no matter, I could never understand it then or afterwards,
and not being able to grasp it, I could not
enter the service as I had intended. I don't mean
only the military service. I did not enter the civil
service either, And so now I have been of no
use whatsoever, as you can now see. Yes, we know

(24:41):
how useless you've been, said one of us. Tell us, rather,
how many people would be of any use at all
if it hadn't been for you. Oh that's utter nonsense,
said Ivan Vassilovitch with genuine annoyance. Well, then what about
the love affair? My love it decreased from that day when,
as often happened, and she looked dreamy and meditative. I

(25:02):
instantly recollected the colonel on the parade ground and felt
so awkward and uncomfortable that I began to see her
less frequently. So my love came to nought. Yes, such
chances arise, and they alter and direct a man's whole life,
he said, And summing up, and you say, and that's
the end of the story, this story. And now I

(25:25):
always pointed out that I always say this story is
interesting to me. But although I won't say I like
this story so much. Instead, I'll say that the story
is really interesting in me, and I think it's really
well written. But it's also, like I mean, it's written
in from my point of view fundamentally misogynist form. Right,
it is fundamentally I had this thing, I had this
love of this beautiful woman, and it fell apart. I

(25:47):
lost it because of my disgust at her father. Right,
But interestingly and not this story is actually based on
what happened to his brother, Serge, who was courting the
daughter of a commander and then watched the mander overseeing
the beating of a soldier, was like, I can't do
any of this. I want to have nothing to do
with any of this, and like stopped courting the daughter.

(26:08):
And the fact that it's related to that is like
particularly interesting, right because at the beginning of this story,
the protagonist Ivan Vasilovich is like, oh, I was living
with my brother who since died, and this is written
about his brother, only the story didn't come out until
actually he died, and so it's kind of a weird
ghost story, I don't know whatever. And it's not written
in a form that people would write most stories now,

(26:29):
where it's this entire build up and then this complete reversal.
You know, this story is absolutely cut into two completely
opposite parts to give us this sense of this high right,
this like you know, overwrought love story, although I think
that all along the overall love story is like and
then the serfs brought us stuff, But maybe everyone just
I don't know, whatever, you know. It seems to be
aware of class, but maybe it's not aware of class.

(26:50):
Maybe I'm just hyper aware of class. It doesn't feel
like it's aware of the feminist implications of itself. But
just yeah, this idea of like he can't even be mad.
He's like, oh, yes, I'm clearly the bad one because
I don't understand how society works. Is like such an
interesting and dark take. And yeah, that's the story about

(27:10):
a soldier running a gauntlet told from the point of
view of some rich guy who watches it and it
fox his entire life up. And it's called After the
Dance by Tolstoi. Thanks for listening, and next week I'll
read you more stories. It could Happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check

(27:31):
us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where It
Could Happen here. Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com,
slash sources, thanks for listening.