conventional. Were they lovers? It seems not. For him, it was a love predicated upon renunciation, whose excitements were called if-only and what-might-have-been.
But all love needs a journey. All love symbolically is a journey, and that journey needs bodying forth. Their journey took place on the 28th of May 1880. He was staying on his country estate; he pressed her to visit him there. She couldn’t: she was an actress, at work, on tour; even she had things that must be renounced. But she would be travelling from Petersburg to Odessa; her route could take her through Mtsensk and Oryol. He consulted the timetable for her. Three trains left Moscow along the Kursk line. The 12:30, the 4 o’clock, and the 8:30: the express, the mail, and the slow train. Respective arrivals at Mtsensk: 10 in the evening, 4:30 in the morning, and 9:45 in the morning. There was the practicality of romance to be considered. Should the beloved arrive with the post, or on the railway’s equivalent of the red-eye? He urged her to take the 12:30, redefining its arrival more exactly to 9:55 p.m.
There is an ironic side to this precision. He was himself notoriously unpunctual. At one time, affectedly, he carried a dozen watches on his person; even so, he would be hours late for a rendezvous. But on May the 6th, trembling like a youth, he met the 9:55 express at the little station of Mtsensk. Night had fallen. He boarded the train. It was thirty miles from Mtsensk to Oryol.
He sat in her compartment for those thirty miles. He gazed at her, he kissed her hands, he inhaled the air she exhaled. He did not dare to kiss her lips: renunciation. Or, he tried to kiss her lips and she turned her face away: embarrassment, humiliation. The banality too, at his age. Or, he kissed her and she kissed him back as ardently: surprise, and leaping fear. We cannot tell: his diary was later burned, her letters have not survived. All we have are his subsequent letters, whose gauge of reliability is that they date this May journey to the month of June. We know that she had a travelling companion, Raisa Alexeyevna. What did she do? Feign sleep, pretend to have sudden night vision for the darkened landscape, retreat behind a volume of Tolstoy? Thirty miles passed. He got off the train at Oryol. She sat at her window, waving her handkerchief to him as the express took her on towards Odessa.
No, even that handkerchief is invented. But the point is, they had had their journey. Now it could be remembered, improved, turned into the embodiment, the actuality of the if-only. He continued to invoke it until his death. It was, in a sense, his last journey, the last journey of the heart. “My life is behind me,” he wrote, “and that hour spent in the railway compartment, when I almost felt like a twenty-year-old youth, was the last burst of flame.”
Does he mean he almost got an erection? Our knowing age rebukes its predecessor for its platitudes and evasions, its sparks, its flames, its fires, its imprecise scorchings. Love isn’t a bonfire, for God’s sake, it’s a hard cock and a wet cunt, we growl at these swooning, renouncing people. Get on with it! Why on earth didn’t you? Cock-scared, cunt-bolted tribe of people! Hand -kissing! It’s perfectly obvious what you really wanted to kiss. So why not? And on a train too. You’d just have to hold your tongue in place and let the movement of the train do the work for you. Clackety-clack, clackety-clack!
When did you last have your hands kissed? And if you did, how do you know he was any good at it? (Further, when did anyone last write to you about kissing your hands?) Here is the argument for the world of renunciation. If we know more about consummation, they knew more about desire. If we know more about numbers, they knew more about despair. If we know more about boasting, they knew more about memory. They had foot-kissing, we have toe-sucking. You still prefer our side of the equation? You may well be right. Then try a
But all love needs a journey. All love symbolically is a journey, and that journey needs bodying forth. Their journey took place on the 28th of May 1880. He was staying on his country estate; he pressed her to visit him there. She couldn’t: she was an actress, at work, on tour; even she had things that must be renounced. But she would be travelling from Petersburg to Odessa; her route could take her through Mtsensk and Oryol. He consulted the timetable for her. Three trains left Moscow along the Kursk line. The 12:30, the 4 o’clock, and the 8:30: the express, the mail, and the slow train. Respective arrivals at Mtsensk: 10 in the evening, 4:30 in the morning, and 9:45 in the morning. There was the practicality of romance to be considered. Should the beloved arrive with the post, or on the railway’s equivalent of the red-eye? He urged her to take the 12:30, redefining its arrival more exactly to 9:55 p.m.
There is an ironic side to this precision. He was himself notoriously unpunctual. At one time, affectedly, he carried a dozen watches on his person; even so, he would be hours late for a rendezvous. But on May the 6th, trembling like a youth, he met the 9:55 express at the little station of Mtsensk. Night had fallen. He boarded the train. It was thirty miles from Mtsensk to Oryol.
He sat in her compartment for those thirty miles. He gazed at her, he kissed her hands, he inhaled the air she exhaled. He did not dare to kiss her lips: renunciation. Or, he tried to kiss her lips and she turned her face away: embarrassment, humiliation. The banality too, at his age. Or, he kissed her and she kissed him back as ardently: surprise, and leaping fear. We cannot tell: his diary was later burned, her letters have not survived. All we have are his subsequent letters, whose gauge of reliability is that they date this May journey to the month of June. We know that she had a travelling companion, Raisa Alexeyevna. What did she do? Feign sleep, pretend to have sudden night vision for the darkened landscape, retreat behind a volume of Tolstoy? Thirty miles passed. He got off the train at Oryol. She sat at her window, waving her handkerchief to him as the express took her on towards Odessa.
No, even that handkerchief is invented. But the point is, they had had their journey. Now it could be remembered, improved, turned into the embodiment, the actuality of the if-only. He continued to invoke it until his death. It was, in a sense, his last journey, the last journey of the heart. “My life is behind me,” he wrote, “and that hour spent in the railway compartment, when I almost felt like a twenty-year-old youth, was the last burst of flame.”
Does he mean he almost got an erection? Our knowing age rebukes its predecessor for its platitudes and evasions, its sparks, its flames, its fires, its imprecise scorchings. Love isn’t a bonfire, for God’s sake, it’s a hard cock and a wet cunt, we growl at these swooning, renouncing people. Get on with it! Why on earth didn’t you? Cock-scared, cunt-bolted tribe of people! Hand -kissing! It’s perfectly obvious what you really wanted to kiss. So why not? And on a train too. You’d just have to hold your tongue in place and let the movement of the train do the work for you. Clackety-clack, clackety-clack!
When did you last have your hands kissed? And if you did, how do you know he was any good at it? (Further, when did anyone last write to you about kissing your hands?) Here is the argument for the world of renunciation. If we know more about consummation, they knew more about desire. If we know more about numbers, they knew more about despair. If we know more about boasting, they knew more about memory. They had foot-kissing, we have toe-sucking. You still prefer our side of the equation? You may well be right. Then try a
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