Childhood

Childhood, the first installment of Leo Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical trilogy, is narrated by Nikolenka Irtenev, a boy reflecting on the experiences that shaped his early years on a Russian country estate and later in Moscow. The story moves between vivid domestic scenes and the narrator's shifting inner world, tracing a path from the security of childhood to its painful end.

Three days after his tenth birthday, Nikolenka is awakened by Karl Ivanitch, the family's elderly German tutor, who swats flies in the bedroom Nikolenka shares with his older brother Woloda. Nikolenka silently resents the old man, yet when Karl sits at his feet and speaks kindly, his irritation dissolves into guilt and affection. To explain his tears, Nikolenka invents a dream about Mamma dying, then gradually convinces himself the dream was real and weeps harder.

Downstairs, Mamma sits making tea. The narrator tries to recall her face but can summon only fragments: her brown eyes, the mole on her neck, her delicate hand. He calls her smile the essence of beauty. In Papa's study, Papa announces he is leaving for Moscow that night and taking the boys. They will live with Grandmamma and begin proper studies, while Mamma, Nikolenka's sister Lubotshka, and the rest of the household remain in the country. Nikolenka notices an envelope on the desk addressed to "Karl Ivanitch Mayer" and realizes the tutor will likely be dismissed.

Karl is visibly distraught during lessons and retreats to a pantry, where he pours out his bitterness to Nicola, a household servant. Karl has served the family for 12 years, loved the children as his own, and nursed Woloda through a nine-day fever, yet now he is being discarded. Nikolenka listens at the door, torn between sympathy for Karl and love for Papa. Back in the schoolroom, Karl dictates a pointed sentence: "The most cruel of all passions is ingratitude."

Before luncheon, Grisha arrives at the house. A wandering holy fool of about 50, Grisha is gaunt and pockmarked, with one sightless eye. He goes barefoot year-round and speaks in disconnected phrases some take for prophecies. At the meal, Papa disdains such wanderers, while Mamma defends Grisha, noting he once predicted the exact day and hour of her own father's death.

The family goes hunting that afternoon. Papa assigns Nikolenka a greyhound and sends him to wait for a hare. When one finally appears, Nikolenka shouts and releases the dog too early; the hare escapes. Later, the children play a game based on The Swiss Family Robinson. When Katenka, the 12-year-old daughter of the governess Mimi (Maria Ivanovna), bends over a caterpillar and the breeze lifts the cloth at her neck, Nikolenka impulsively kisses her bare shoulder and realizes he is seeing her with new, deeper feelings.

That evening, Karl slips into Papa's study with a document. An hour later he emerges in tears. Papa tells Mamma he has decided to bring Karl to Moscow after all: Karl had intended to protest his dismissal but wept at his own words, declaring he would serve without salary rather than leave the children. Papa, touched, reversed his decision. Before bed, the children spy on Grisha at his evening prayers. Nikolenka, who expected to laugh, watches with growing awe as Grisha kneels in moonlight, praying with desperate earnestness. The impression of genuine faith never leaves Nikolenka's mind.

The next day, the family parts. Mamma clasps the boys, weeping, barely able to speak. From the carriage, Nikolenka catches a final glimpse of her walking up the steps, face buried in her hands.

Nearly a month later, the boys live at Grandmamma's house in Moscow. For Grandmamma's name-day, the feast day of the saint for whom she is named, Nikolenka writes congratulatory verses but agonizes over the line "We love you like our Mother dear," which troubles him because Mamma is absent and the comparison feels dishonest. Despite his paralysis of shyness, Grandmamma calls the poem charming and kisses his forehead.

In Moscow, Nikolenka develops an intense attachment to Seriosha Iwin, a bold, handsome boy. He dreams of Seriosha constantly yet is too afraid to express his affection. One day, Seriosha forces Ilinka Grap, a meek, poorly dressed boy and the son of a poor foreigner with ties to the family, to attempt a headstand. The group holds Ilinka upside down while laughing. When Ilinka kicks free and accidentally strikes Seriosha, Seriosha retaliates violently. Nikolenka feels compassion but stays silent. Looking back, the narrator condemns his own cruelty, calling his desire to impress Seriosha a contemptible motivation that forms "dark spots on the pages of my youthful recollections."

At Grandmamma's evening party, Nikolenka meets Sonetchka Valakhin, a charming 12-year-old with flaxen curls who arrives with her mother, Madame Valakhin. They dance together during the quadrilles, and he feels deliriously happy. During the mazurka, however, he is paired with another girl and freezes, unable to perform the unfamiliar steps. Papa pushes him aside with an angry voice, and Nikolenka is devastated. Later, buoyed by champagne, he dances wildly with Sonetchka, who proposes they address each other with the intimate "thou" instead of the formal "you." In bed, Nikolenka whispers to Woloda that he is terribly in love.

Six months later, Papa announces they must return to the country. Mamma's letter arrives in two parts. The first describes a minor illness and gently warns Papa about his gambling losses. The second, in a shaking hand, confesses she will never leave her bed again and begs Papa to bring the children for a final embrace. They arrive at Petrovskoe to find the house hushed. Mamma's eyes are open but cannot see. Natalia Savishna, the family's devoted housekeeper, has served Mamma since childhood. When Mamma once offered Natalia a legal charter granting freedom from serfdom, Natalia tore it to pieces, believing she was being dismissed, and stayed on out of pure love. Now Natalia recounts Mamma's final moments: she gasped for the children, stretched out her arms in what Natalia believes was a blessing, and died in agony.

At the funeral, Nikolenka weeps but admits his grief was never wholly pure, always mixed with a desire to appear more sorrowful than anyone else. In a far corner, Natalia Savishna stands with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven. Nikolenka thinks, "There stands one who sincerely loved her," and feels ashamed. Afterward, Natalia speaks of Mamma with tender grief and insists that the souls of the just hover near their earthly home for 40 days before entering Paradise. The narrator observes that Natalia's lifelong habit of duty carried her through grief that would have broken anyone else.

In Moscow, Grandmamma collapses into a week of anguish, at one point mistaking Nikolenka for Mamma's ghost. Eventually her tears return and she recovers, pouring her love onto the children. Natalia Savishna, alone at Petrovskoe, develops dropsy, a condition of severe fluid retention, within a year. She fashions her own burial garments, distributes her possessions with meticulous care, and dies pronouncing God's name with a smile. She is buried beside Mamma's tomb.

With Mamma's death, the narrator declares, the happy time of childhood ended and a new epoch began. The novel closes with Nikolenka standing between the two graves, asking whether Providence united him with these two beings solely to make him regret their loss for the rest of his life. The story continues in the trilogy's second volume, Boyhood.