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diff --git a/old/wstys10.txt b/old/wstys10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..145cdc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wstys10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3348 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad +#25 in our series by Joseph Conrad + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This eText still needs more proofreading, please let me know if +you would be interested, or just email me all the errors you find +once you have completed this book. Thanks, Michael[hart@pobox.com] + + + + + +Under Western Eyes + +by Joseph Conrad + + + + +"I would take liberty from any hand +as a hungry man would snatch a piece of bread." + +Miss HALDIN + + + + +PART FIRST + +To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high +gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my +pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who +called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril son of +Isidor--Kirylo Sidorovitch-Razumov, + +If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they +have been smothered out of existence a long time ago under a +wilderness of words. Words, as is well known, are the great foes +of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. +It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever +share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person +may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time +when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a +mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. + +This being so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov or guessed +at his reality by the force of insight, much less have imagined +him as he was. Even to invent the mere bald facts of his life +would have been utterly beyond my powers. But I think that +without this declaration the readers of these pages will be able +to detect in the story the marks of documentary evidence. And +that is perfectly correct. It is based on a document; all I have +brought to it is my knowledge of the Russian language, which is +sufficient for what is attempted here. The document, of course, +is something in the nature of a journal, a diary, yet not exactly +that in its actual form. For instance, most of it was not written +up from day to day, though all the entries are dated. Some of +these entries cover months of time and extend over dozens of +pages. All the earlier part is a retrospect, in a narrative +form, relating to an event which took place about a year before. + +I must mention that I have lived for a long time in Geneva. A +whole quarter of that town, on account of many Russians residing +there, is called La Petite Russie --Little Russia. I had a +rather extensive connexion in Little Russia at that time. Yet I +confess that I have no comprehension of the Russian character. +The illogicality of their attitude, the arbitrariness of their +conclusions, the frequency of the exceptional, should present no +difficulty to a student of many grammars; but there must be +something else in the way, some special human trait--one of those +subtle differences that are beyond the ken of mere professors. +What must remain striking to a teacher of languages is the +Russians' extraordinary love of words. They gather them up; they +cherish them, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the +contrary, they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or +by the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such +an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very +accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself from the suspicion +that they really understand what they say. There is a generosity +in their ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from +common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnected to be classed +as eloquence. . . .But I must apologize for this digression. + +It would be idle to inquire why Mr. Razumov has left this +record behind him. It is inconceivable that he should have +wished any human eye to see it. A mysterious impulse of human +nature comes into play here. Putting aside Samuel Pepys, who has +forced in this way the door of immortality, innumerable people, +criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls, statesmen, and +simple imbeciles, have kept self-revealing records from vanity no +doubt, but also from other more inscrutable motives. There must +be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men +have used them for self-communion. Being myself a quiet +individual I take it that what all men are really after is some +form or perhaps only some formula of peace. Certainly they are +crying loud enough for it at the present day. What sort of peace +Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov expected to find in the writing up of +his record it passeth my understanding to guess. + +The fact remains that he has written it. + +Mr. Razumov was a tall, well-proportioned young man, quite +unusually dark for a Russian from the Central Provinces. His +good looks would have been unquestionable if it had not been for +a peculiar lack of fineness in the features. It was as if a face +modelled vigorously in wax (with some approach even to a +classical correctness of type) had been held close to a fire till +all sharpness of line had been lost in the softening of the +material. But even thus he was sufficiently good-looking. His +manner, too, was good. In discussion he was easily swayed by +argument and authority. With his younger compatriots he took the +attitude of an inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind that +hears you out intelligently and then--just changes the subject. + +This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectual +insufficiency or from an imperfect trust in one's own +convictions, procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity. +Amongst a lot of exuberant talkers, in the habit of exhausting +themselves daily by ardent discussion, a comparatively taciturn +personality is naturally credited with reserve power. By his +comrades at the St. Petersburg University, Kirylo Sidorovitch +Razumov, third year's student in philosophy, was looked upon as a +strong nature--an altogether trustworthy man. This, in a country +where an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death or +sometimes by a fate worse than mere death, meant that he was +worthy of being trusted with forbidden opinions. He was liked +also for his amiability and for his quiet readiness to oblige his +comrades even at the cost of personal inconvenience. + +Mr. Razumov was supposed to be the son of an Archpriest and to be +protected by a distinguished nobleman--perhaps of his own distant +province. But his outward appearance accorded badly with such +humble origin. Such a descent was not credible. It was, indeed, +suggested that Mr. Razumov was the son of an Archpriest's pretty +daughter--which, of course, would put a different complexion on +the matter. This theory also rendered intelligible the +protection of the distinguished nobleman. All this, however, had +never been investigated maliciously or otherwise. No one knew or +cared who the nobleman in question was. Razumov received a modest +but very sufficient allowance from the hands of an obscure +attorney, who seemed to act as his guardian in some measure. +Now and then he appeared at some professor's informal reception. +Apart from that Razumov was not known to have any social relations +in the town. He attended the obligatory lectures regularly and was +considered by the authorities as a very promising student. He worked +at home in the manner of a man who means to get on, but did not shut +himself up severely for that purpose. He was always accessible, +and there was nothing secret or reserved in his life. + + +I + +THE origin of Mr. Razumov's record is connected with an event +characteristic of modern Russia in the actual fact: the +assassination of a prominent statesman --and still more +characteristic of the moral corruption of an oppressed society +where the noblest aspirations of humanity, the desire of freedom, +an ardent patriotism, the love of justice, the sense of pity, and +even the fidelity of simple minds are prostituted to the lusts of +hate and fear, the inseparable companions of an uneasy despotism. + +The fact alluded to above is the successful attempt on the life +of Mr. de P---, the President of the notorious Repressive +Commission of some years ago, the Minister of State invested with +extraordinary powers. The newspapers made noise enough about that +fanatical, narrow-chested figure in gold-laced uniform, with a +face of crumpled parchment, insipid, bespectacled eyes, and the +cross of the Order of St. Procopius hung under the skinny throat. +For a time, it may be remembered, not a month passed without his +portrait appearing in some one of the illustrated papers of +Europe. He served the monarchy by imprisoning, exiling, or +sending to the gallows men and women, young and old, with an +equable, unwearied industry. In his mystic acceptance of the +principle of autocracy he was bent on extirpating from the land +every vestige of anything that resembled freedom in public +institutions; and in his ruthless persecution of the rising +generation he seemed to aim at the destruction of the very +hope of liberty itself. + +It is said that this execrated personality had not +enough imagination to be aware of the hate he inspired. It is +hardly credible; but it is a fact that he took very few +precautions for his safety. In the preamble of a certain famous +State paper he had declared once that "the thought of liberty has +never existed in the Act of the Creator. From the multitude of +men's counsel nothing could come but revolt and disorder; and +revolt and disorder in a world created for obedience and +stability is sin. It was not Reason but Authority which +expressed the Divine Intention. God was the Autocrat of the +Universe. . . ." It may be that the man who made this +declaration believed that heaven itself was bound to protect him +in his remorseless defence of Autocracy on this earth. + +No doubt the vigilance of the police saved him many times; but, +as a matter of fact, when his appointed fate overtook him, the +competent authorities could not have given him any warning. They +had no knowledge of any conspiracy against the Minister's life, +had no hint of any plot through their usual channels of +information, had seen no signs, were aware of no suspicious +movements or dangerous persons. + +Mr. de P--- was being driven towards the railway station in a +two-horse uncovered sleigh with footman and coachman on the box. +Snow had been falling all night, making the roadway, uncleared as +yet at this early hour, very heavy for the horses. It was still +falling thickly. But the sleigh must have been observed and +marked down. As it drew over to the left before taking a turn, +the footman noticed a peasant walking slowly on the edge of the +pavement with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and +his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the falling snow. On +being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about and swung his +arm. In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation +mufffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and +mangled on the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had +fallen off the box mortally wounded. The footman (who survived) +had no time to see the face of the man in the sheepskin coat. +After throwing the bomb this last got away, but it is supposed that, +seeing a lot of people surging up on all sides of him in the falling snow, +and all running towards the scene of the explosion, he thought it safer +to turn back with them. + +In an incredibly short time an excited crowd assembled round the +sledge. The Minister-President, getting out unhurt into the deep +snow, stood near the groaning coachman and addressed the people +repeatedly in his weak, colourless voice: "I beg of you to keep +off: For the love of God, I beg of you good people to keep off." + +It was then that a tall young man who had remained standing +perfectly still within a carriage gateway, two houses lower down, +stepped out into the street and walking up rapidly flung another +bomb over the heads of the crowd. It actually struck the +Minister-President on the shoulder as he stooped over his dying +servant, then falling between his feet exploded with a terrific +concentrated violence, striking him dead to the ground, finishing +the wounded man and practically annihilating the empty sledge in +the twinkling of an eye. With a yell of horror the crowd broke +up and fled in all directions, except for those who fell dead or +dying where they stood nearest to the Minister-President, and one +or two others who did not fall till they had run a little way. + +The first explosion had brought together a crowd as if by +enchantment, the second made as swiftly a solitude in the street +for hundreds of yards in each direction. Through the falling +snow people looked from afar at the small heap of dead bodies +lying upon each other near the carcases of the two horses. +Nobody dared to approach till some Cossacks of a street-patrol +galloped up and, dismounting, began to turn over the dead. +Amongst the innocent victims of the second explosion laid out on +the pavement there was a body dressed in a peasant's sheepskin +coat; but the face was unrecognisable, there was absolutely +nothing found in the pockets of its poor clothing, and it was the +only one whose identity was never established. + +That day Mr. Razumov got up at his usual hour and spent the +morning within the University buildings listening to the +lectures and working for some time,in the library. He heard the +first vague rumour of something in the way of bomb-throwing at +the table of the students' ordinary, where he was accustomed to +eat his two o'clock dinner. But this rumour was made up of mere +whispers, and this was Russia, where it was not always safe, for +a student especially, to appear too much interested in certain +kinds of whispers. Razumov was one of those men who, living in a +period of mental and political unrest, keep an instinctive hold +on normal, practical, everyday life. He was aware of the +emotional tension of his time; he even responded to it in an +indefinite way. But his main concern was with his work, his +studies, and with his own future. + +Officially and in fact without a family (for the daughter of the +Archpriest had long been dead), no home influences had shaped his +opinions or his feelings. He was as lonely in the world as a man +swimming in the deep sea. The word Razumov was the mere label of +a solitary individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging to +him anywhere. His closest parentage was defined in the statement +that he was a Russian. Whatever good he expected from life +would be given to or withheld from his hopes by that connexion +alone. This immense parentage suffered from the throes of +internal dissensions, and he shrank mentally from the fray as a +good-natured man may shrink from taking definite sides in a +violent family quarrel. + +Razumov, going home, reflected that having prepared all the +matters of the forthcoming examination, he could now devote his +time to the subject of the prize essay. He hankered after the +silver medal. The prize was offered by the Ministry of +Education; the names of the competitors would be submitted to the +Minister himself. The mere fact of trying would be considered +meritorious in the higher quarters; and the possessor of the +prize would have a claim to an administrative appointment of the +better sort after he had taken his degree. The student Razumov +in an access of elation forgot the dangers menacing the stability +of the institutions which give rewards and appointments. But +remembering the medallist of the year before, Razumov, the young +man of no parentage, was sobered. He and some others happened to +be assembled in their comrade's rooms at the very time when that +last received the official advice of his success. He was a quiet, +unassuming young man: "Forgive me," he had said with a faint +apologetic smile and taking up his cap, "I am going out to order +up some wine. But I must first send a telegram to my folk at home. +I say! Won't the old people make it a festive time for the neighbours +for twenty miles around our place." + +Razumov thought there was nothing of that sort for him in the +world. His success would matter to no one. But he felt no +bitterness against the nobleman his protector, who was not a +provincial magnate as was generally supposed. He was in fact +nobody less than Prince K---, once a great and splendid figure in +the world and now, his day being over, a Senator and a gouty +invalid, living in a still splendid but more domestic manner. He +had some young children and a wife as aristocratic and proud as +himself. + +In all his life Razumov was allowed only once to come into +personal contact with the Prince. + +It had the air of a chance meeting in the little attorney's +office. One day Razumov, coming in by appointment, found a +stranger standing there--a tall, aristocratic-looking Personage +with silky, grey sidewhiskers. The bald-headed, sly little +lawyer-fellow called out, "Come in--come in, Mr. Razumov," with a +sort of ironic heartiness. Then turning deferentially to the +stranger with the grand air, "A ward of mine, your, Excellency. +One of the most promising students of his faculty in the St. +Petersburg University." + +To his intense surprise Razumov saw a white shapely hand extended +to him. He took it in great confusion (it was soft and passive) +and heard at the same time a condescending murmur in which he +caught only the words "Satisfactory" and "Persevere." But the +most amazing thing of all was to feel suddenly a distinct +pressure of the white shapely hand just before it was withdrawn: +a light pressure like a secret sign. The emotion of it was +terrible. Razumov's heart seemed to leap into his throat. When +he raised his eyes the aristocratic personage, motioning the +little lawyer aside, had opened the door and was going out. + +The attorney rummaged amongst the papers on his desk for a time. +"Do you know who that was?" he asked suddenly. + +Razumov, whose heart was thumping hard yet, shook his head in silence. + +"That was Prince K ---. You wonder what he could be doing in the +hole of a poor legal rat like myself-- eh? These awfully +great people have their sentimental curiosities like common +sinners. But if I were you, Kirylo Sidorovitch," he continued, +leering and laying a peculiar emphasis on the patronymic," +I wouldn't boast at large of the introduction. It would not be +prudent, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Oh dear no! It would be in fact +dangerous for your future." + +The young man's ears burned like fire; his sight was dim. +"That man!" Razumov was saying to himself. "He!" + +Henceforth it was by this monosyllable that Mr. Razumov got into +the habit of referring mentally to the stranger with grey silky +side-whiskers. From that time too, when walking in the more +fashionable quarters, he noted with interest the magnificent +horses and carriages with Prince K --- 's liveries on the box. +Once he saw the Princess get out--she was shopping--followed by +two girls, of which one was nearly a head taller than the other. +Their fair hair hung loose down their backs in the English style; +they had merry eyes, their coats, muffs, and little fur caps were +exactly alike, and their cheeks and noses were tinged a cheerful +pink by the frost. They crossed the pavement in front of him, +and Razumov went on his way smiling shyly to himself. "His" +daughters. They resembled "Him." The young man felt a glow of +warm friendliness towards these girls who would never know of his +existence. Presently they would marry Generals or Kammerherrs +and have girls and boys of their own, w +ho perhaps would be aware of him as a celebrated old professor, +decorated, possibly a Privy Councillor, one of the glories of +Russia--nothing more! + +But a celebrated professor was a somebody. Distinction would +convert the label Razumov into an honoured name. There was +nothing strange in the student Razumov's wish for +distinction. A man's real life is that accorded to him in the +thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love. +Returning home on the day of the attempt on Mr. de P---'s life +Razumov resolved to have a good try for the silver medal. + +Climbing slowly the four flights of the dark, dirty staircase in +the house where he had his lodgings, he felt confident of +success. The winner's name would be published in the papers on +New Year's Day. And at the thought that "He" would most probably +read it there, Razumov stopped short on the stairs for an instant, +then went on smiling faintly at his own emotion. "This is but +a shadow," he said to himself," but the medal is a solid beginning." + +With those ideas of industry in his head the warmth of his room +was agreeable and encouraging. "I shall put in four hours of +good work," he thought. But no sooner had he closed the door +than he was horribly startled. All black against the usual tall +stove of white tiles gleaming in the dusk, stood a strange +figure, wearing a skirted, close-fitting, brown cloth coat +strapped round the waist, in long boots, and with a little +Astrakhan cap on its head. It loomed lithe and martial. Razumov +was utterly confounded. It was only when the figure advancing +two paces asked in an untroubled, grave voice if the outer door +was closed that he regained his power of speech. + +"Haldin!. . .Victor Victorovitch!. . .Is that you? . . .Yes. The +outer door is shut all right. But this is indeed unexpected." + +Victor Haldin, a student older than most of his contemporaries at +the University, was not one of the industrious set. He was +hardly ever seen at lectures; the authorities had marked him as +"restless" and "unsound "--very bad notes. But he had a +great personal prestige with his comrades and influenced their +thoughts. Razumov had never been intimate with him. They had +met from time to time at gatherings in other students' houses. +They had even had a discussion together--one of those discussions +on first principles dear to the sanguine minds of youth. + +Razumov wished the man had chosen some other time to come for a +chat. He felt in good trim to tackle the prize essay. But as +Haldin could not be slightingly dismissed Razumov adopted the +tone of hospitality, asking him to sit down and smoke. + +"Kirylo Sidorovitch," said the other, flinging off his cap, "we +are not perhaps in exactly the same camp. Your judgment is more +philosophical. You are a man of few words, but I haven't met +anybody who dared to doubt the generosity of your sentiments. +There is a solidity about your character which cannot exist +without courage. + +Razumov felt flattered and began to murmur shyly something about +being very glad of his good opinion, when Haldin raised his hand. + +"That is what I was saying to myself," he continued, "as I dodged +in the woodyard down by the river-side. 'He has a strong +character this young man,' I said to myself. 'He does not throw +his soul to the winds.' Your reserve has always fascinated me, +Kirylo Siderovitch. So I tried to remember your address. But +look here--it was a piece of luck. Your dvornik was away from +the gate talking to a sleigh-driver on the other side of the +street. I met no one on the stairs, not a soul. As I came up +to your floor I caught sight of your landlady coming out of your +rooms. But she did not see me. She crossed the landing to her +own side, and then I slipped in. I have been here two hours +expecting you to come in every moment. + +Razumov had listened in astonishment; but before he could +open his mouth Haldin added, speaking deliberately," It was I +who removed de P--- this morning." Razumov kept down a cry of +dismay. The sentiment of his life being utterly ruined by this +contact with such a crime expressed itself quaintly by a sort of +half-derisive mental exclamation, "There goes my silver medal!" + +Haldin continued after waiting a while-- + +"You say nothing, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I understand your silence. +To be sure, I cannot expect you with your frigid English manner +to embrace me. But never mind your manners. You have enough +heart to have heard the sound of weeping and gnashing of teeth +this man raised in the land. That would be enough to get over +any philosophical hopes. He was uprooting the tender plant. He +had to be stopped. He was a dangerous man--a convinced man. +Three more years of his work would have put us back fifty years +into bondage--and look at all the lives wasted, at all the souls +lost in that time." + +His curt, self-confident voice suddenly lost its ring and it was +in a dull tone that he added, "Yes, brother, I have killed him. +It's weary work." + +Razumov had sunk into a chair. Every moment he expected a crowd +of policemen to rush in. There must have been thousands of them +out looking for that man walking up and down in his room. Haldin +was talking again in a restrained, steady voice. Now and then he +flourished an arm, slowly, without excitement. + +He told Razumov how he had brooded for a year; how he had not +slept properly for weeks. He and "Another" had a warning of the +Minister's movements from "a certain person" late the evening +before. He and that Another" prepared their "engines" and +"resolved to have no sleep till "the deed" was done. They +walked the streets under the falling snow with the "engines" +on them, exchanging not a word the livelong night. When they +happened to meet a police patrol they took each other by the +arm and pretended to be a couple of peasants on the spree. +They reeled and talked in drunken hoarse voices. Except for +these strange outbreaks they kept silence, moving on ceaselessly. +Their plans had been previously arranged. At daybreak they made +their way to the spot which they knew the sledge must pass. +When it appeared in sight they exchanged a muttered good-bye +and separated. The "other" remained at the corner, Haldin +took up a position a little farther up the street. . . . + +After throwing his "engine" he ran off and in a moment was +overtaken by the panic-struck people flying away from the spot +after the second explosion. They were wild with terror. He was +jostled once or twice. He slowed down for the rush to pass him and +then turned to the left into a narrow street. There he was alone. + +He marvelled at this immediate escape. The work was done. He +could hardly believe it. He fought with an almost irresistible +longing to lie down on the pavement and sleep. But this sort of +faintness--a drowsy faintness--passed off quickly. He walked +faster, making his way to one of the poorer parts of the town in +order to look up Ziemianitch. + +This Ziemianitch, Razumov understood, was a sort of town-peasant +who had got on; owner of a small number of sledges and horses for +hire. Haldin paused in his narrative to exclaim-- + +"A bright spirit ! A hardy soul! The best driver in St. Petersburg. +He has a team of three horses there. . . . Ah! He's a fellow!" + +This man had declared himself willing to take out safely, at +any time, one or two persons to the second or third railway +station on one of the southern lines. But there had been no time +to warn him the night before. His usual haunt seemed to be a +low-class eating-house on the outskirts of the town. When Haldin +got there the man was not to be found. He was not expected to +turn up again till the evening. Haldin wandered away restlessly. + +He saw the gate of a woodyard open and went in to get out of the +wind which swept the bleak broad thoroughfare. The great +rectangular piles of cut wood loaded with snow resembled the huts +of a village. At first the watchman who discovered him crouching +amongst them talked in a friendly manner. He was a dried-up old +man wearing two ragged army coats one over the other; his wizened +little face, tied up under the jaw and over the ears in a dirty +red handkerchief, looked comical. Presently he grew sulky, and +then all at once without rhyme or reason began to shout furiously. + +"Aren't you ever going to clear out of this, you loafer? We know +all about factory hands of your sort. A big, strong, young chap! +You aren't even drunk. What do you want here? You don't frighten us. +Take yourself and your ugly eyes away." + +Haldin stopped before the sitting Razumov. His supple figure, +with the white forehead above which the fair hair stood straight +up, had an aspect of lofty daring. + +"He did not like my eyes," he said. "And so. . .here I am." + +Razumov made an effort to speak calmly. + +"But pardon me, Victor Victorovitch. We know each other so +little. . . . I don't see why you . . ." + +"Confidence," said Haldin. + +This word sealed Razumov's lips as if a hand had been clapped +on his mouth. His brain seethed with arguments + +"And so--here you are," he muttered through his teeth. + +The other did not detect the tone of anger. Never suspected it. + +"Yes. And nobody knows I am here. You are the last person that +could be suspected--should I get caught. That's an advantage, +you see. And then--speaking to a superior mind like yours I can +well say all the truth. It occurred to me that you--you have no +one belonging to you--no ties, no one to suffer for it if this +came out by some means. There have been enough ruined Russian +homes as it is. But I don't see how my passage through your +rooms can be ever known. If I should be got hold of, I'll know +how to keep silent--no matter what they may be pleased to do to me," +he added grimly. + +He began to walk again while Razumov sat still appalled. + +"You thought that----" he faltered out almost sick with indignation. + +"Yes, Razumov. Yes, brother. Some day you shall help to build. +You suppose that I am a terrorist, now --a destructor of what is, +But consider that the true destroyers are they who destroy the +spirit of progress and truth, not the avengers who merely kill +the bodies of the persecutors of human dignity. Men like me are +necessary to make room for self-contained, thinking men like you. +Well, we have made the sacrifice of our lives, but all the same I +want to escape if it can be done. It is not my life I want to +save, but my power to do. I won't live idle. Oh no! Don't make +any mistake, Razumov. Men like me are rare. And, besides, an +example like this is more awful to oppressors when the +perpetrator vanishes without a trace. They sit in their offices +and palaces and quake. All I want you to do is to help me to +vanish. No great matter that. Only to go by and by and see +Ziemianitch for me at that place where I went this morning. +Just tell him, 'He whom you know wants a well-horsed sledge +to pull up half an hour after midnight at the seventh +lamp-post on the left counting from the upper end of +Karabelnaya. If nobody gets in, the sledge is to run +round a block or two, so as to come back past the +same spot in ten minutes' time.'" + +Razumov wondered why he had not cut short that talk and told this +man to go away long before. Was it weakness or what? + +He concluded that it was a sound instinct. Haldin must have been +seen. It was impossible that some people should not have noticed +the face and appearance of the man who threw the second bomb. +Haldin was a noticeable person. The police in their thousands +must have had his description within the hour. With every moment +the danger grew. Sent out to wander in the streets he could not +escape being caught in the end. + +The police would very soon find out all about him. They would set +about discovering a conspiracy. Everybody Haldin had ever known +would be in the greatest danger. Unguarded expressions, little +facts in themselves innocent would be counted for crimes. +Razumov remembered certain words he said, the speeches he had +listened to, the harmless gatherings he had attended--it was +almost impossible for a student to keep out of that sort of +thing, without becoming suspect to his comrades. + +Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered, +perhaps ill-used. He saw himself deported by an administrative +order, his life broken, ruined, and robbed of all hope. He saw +himself--at best--leading a miserable existence under police +supervision, in some small, faraway provincial town, without +friends to assist his necessities or even take any steps to +alleviate his lot--as others had. Others had fathers, mothers, +brothers, relations, connexions, to move heaven and earth on +their behalf --he had no one. The very officials that sentenced +him some morning would forget his existence before sunset. + +He saw his youth pass away from him in misery and half +starvation--his strength give way, his mind become an abject +thing. He saw himself creeping, broken down and shabby, about +the streets--dying unattended in some filthy hole of a room, or +on the sordid bed of a Government hospital. + +He shuddered. Then the peace of bitter calmness came over him. +It was best to keep this man out of the streets till he could be +got rid of with some chance of escaping. That was the best that +could be done. Razumov, of course, felt the safety of his lonely +existence to be permanently endangered. This evening's doings +could turn up against him at any time as long as this man lived +and the present institutions endured. They appeared to him +rational and indestructible at that moment. They had a force of +harmony--in contrast with the horrible discord of this man's +presence. He hated the man. He said quietly-- + +"Yes, of course, I will go. 'You must give me precise +directions, and for the rest--depend on me." + +"Ah! You are a fellow! Collected--cool as a cucumber. A regular +Englishman. Where did you get your soul from? There aren't +many like you. Look here, brother! Men like me leave no +posterity, but their souls are not lost. No man's soul is ever +lost. It works for itself--or else where would be the sense of +self-sacrifice, of martyrdom, of conviction, of faith--the +labours of the soul? What will become of my soul when I die in +the way I must die--soon--very soon perhaps? It shall not perish. +Don't make a mistake, Razumov. This is not murder--it is +war, war. My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body +till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern +civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of +Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your +philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The +Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a +mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to +do this--reckless---like a butcher --in the middle of all these +innocent people--scattering death--I! I!. . .I wouldn't hurt a fly!" + +"Not so loud," warned Razumov harshly. + +Haldin sat down abruptly, and leaning his head on his folded arms +burst into tears. He wept for a long time. The dusk had +deepened in the room. Razumov, motionless in sombre wonder, +listened to the sobs. + +The other raised his head, got up and with an effort mastered his voice. + +"Yes. Men like me leave no posterity," he repeated in a +subdued tone." I have a sister though. She's with my old +mother--I persuaded them to go abroad this year--thank God. +Not a bad little girl my sister. She has the most trustful eyes of +any human being that ever walked this earth. She will marry +well, I hope. She may have children--sons perhaps. Look at me. +My father was a Government official in the provinces, He had a +little land too. A simple servant of God--a true Russian in his +way. His was the soul of obedience. But I am not like him. They +say I resemble my mother's eldest brother, an officer. They shot +him in '28. Under Nicholas, you know. Haven't I told you that +this is war, war. . . . But God of Justice! This is weary work." + +Razumov, in his chair, leaning his head on his hand, spoke as if +from the bottom of an abyss. + +"You believe in God, Haldin?" + +"There you go catching at words that are wrung from one. What +does it matter? What was it the Englishman said : 'There is a +divine soul in things . . .' Devil take him--I don't remember +now. But he spoke the truth. When the day of you thinkers comes +don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul--and that's +resignation. Respect that in your intellectual restlessness and +don't let your arrogant wisdom spoil its message to the world. I +am speaking to you now like a man with a rope round his neck. +What do you imagine I am? A being in revolt? No. It's you +thinkers who are in everlasting revolt. I am one of the +resigned. When the necessity of this heavy work came to me and I +understood that it had to be done--what did I do? Did I exult? +Did I take pride in my purpose? Did I try to weigh its worth and +consequences? No! I was resigned. I thought 'God's will be +done.'" + +He threw himself full length on Razumov's bed and putting the +backs of his hands over his eyes remained perfectly motionless +and silent. Not even the sound of his breathing could be heard. +The dead stillness or the room remained undisturbed till in the +darkness Razumov said gloomily-- + +"Haldin." + +"Yes," answered the other readily, quite invisible now on the bed +and without the slightest stir. + +"Isn't it time for me to start?" + +"Yes, brother." The other was heard, lying still in the darkness +as though he were talking in his sleep. "The time has come to +put fate to the test." + +He paused, then gave a few lucid directions in the quiet +impersonal voice of a man in a trance. Razumov made ready +without a word of answer. As he was leaving the room the voice +on the bed said after him-- + +"Go with God, thou silent soul." + +On the landing, moving softly, Razumov locked the door and put +the key in his pocket. + + +II + +The words and events of that evening must have been graven as if +with a steel tool on Mr. Razumov's brain since he was able to +write his relation with such fullness and precision a good many +months afterwards. + +The record of the thoughts which assailed him in the street is +even more minute and abundant. They seem to have rushed upon him +with the greater freedom because his thinking powers were no +longer crushed by Haldin's presence--the appalling presence of a +great crime and the stunning force of a great fanaticism. On +looking through the pages of Mr. Razumov's diary I own that a +"rush of thoughts" is not an adequate image. + +The more adequate description would be a tumult of thoughts--the +faithful reflection of the state of his feelings. The thoughts +in themselves were not numerous--they were like the thoughts of +most human beings, few and simple--but they cannot be reproduced +here in all their exclamatory repetitions which went on in an +endless and weary turmoil--for the walk was long. + +If to the Western reader they appear shocking, inappropriate, or +even improper, it must be remembered that as to the first this +may be the effect of my crude statement. For the rest I will +only remark here that this is not a story of the West of Europe. + +Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the +Governments have paid them back in the same coin. It is +unthinkable that any young Englishman should find himself in +Razumov's situation. This being so it would be a vain enterprise +to imagine what he would think. The only safe surmise to make is +that he would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this crisis of +his fate. He would not have an hereditary and personal knowledge +or the means by which historical autocracy represses ideas, +guards its power, and defends its existence. By an act of mental +extravagance he might imagine himself arbitrarily thrown into +prison, but it would never occur to him unless he were delirious +(and perhaps not even then) that he could be beaten with whips as +a practical measure either of investigation or of punishment. + +This is but a crude and obvious example of the different +conditions of Western thought. I don't know that this danger +occurred, specially to Mr. Razumov. No doubt it entered +unconsciously into the general dread and the general +appallingness of this crisis. Razumov, as has been seen, was +aware of more subtle ways in which an individual may be undone by +the proceedings of a despotic Government. A simple expulsion +from the University (the very least that could happen to him), +with an impossibility to continue his studies anywhere, was +enough to ruin utterly a young man depending entirely upon the +development of his natural abilities for his place in the world. +He was a Russian: and for him to be implicated meant simply +sinking into the lowest social depths amongst the hopeless and +the destitute--the night birds of the city. + +The peculiar circumstances of Razumov's parentage, or rather of +his lack of parentage, should be taken into the account of his +thoughts. And he remembered them too. He had been lately +reminded of them in a peculiarly atrocious way by this fatal +Haldin. "Because I haven't that, must everything else be +taken away from me?" he thought. + +He nerved himself for another effort to go on. Along the roadway +sledges glided phantom-like and jingling through a fluttering +whiteness on the black face of the night. "For it is a crime," +he was saying to himself. "A murder is a murder. Though, of +course, some sort of liberal institutions. . . ." + +A feeling of horrible sickness came over him. "I must be +courageous," he exhorted himself mentally. All his strength was +suddenly gone as if taken out by a hand. Then by a mighty effort +of will it came back because he was afraid of fainting in the +street and being picked up by the police with the key of his +lodgings in his pocket. They would find Haldin there, and then, +indeed, he would be undone. + +Strangely enough it was this fear which seems to have kept him up +to the end. The passers-by were rare. They came upon him +suddenly, looming up black in the snowflakes close by, then +vanishing all at once-without footfalls. + +It was the quarter of the very poor. Razumov noticed an elderly +woman tied up in ragged shawls. Under the street lamp she seemed +a beggar off duty. She walked leisurely in the blizzard as though +she had no home to hurry to, she hugged under one arm a round +loaf of black bread with an air of guarding a priceless booty: +and Razumov averting his glance envied her the peace of her mind +and the serenity of her fate. + +To one reading Mr. Razumov's narrative it is really a wonder how +he managed to keep going as he did along one interminable street +after another on pavements that were gradually becoming blocked +with snow. It was the thought of Haldin locked up in his rooms +and the desperate desire to get rid of his presence which +drove him forward. No rational determination had any part in +his exertions. Thus, when on arriving at the low eating-house he +heard that the man of horses, Ziemianitch, was not there, he +could only stare stupidly. + +The waiter, a wild-haired youth in tarred boots and a pink shirt, +exclaimed, uncovering his pale gums in a silly grin, that +Ziemianitch had got his skinful early in the afternoon and had +gone away with a bottle under each arm to keep it up amongst the +horses--he supposed. + +The owner of the vile den, a bony short man in a dirty cloth +caftan coming down to his heels, stood by, his hands tucked into +his belt, and nodded confirmation. + +The reek of spirits, the greasy rancid steam of food got Razumov +by the throat. He struck a table with his clenched hand and +shouted violently-- + +"You lie." + +Bleary unwashed faces were turned to his direction. A mild-eyed +ragged tramp drinking tea at the next table moved farther away. +A murmur of wonder arose with an undertone of uneasiness. A +laugh was heard too, and an exclamation, "There! there!" +jeeringly soothing. The waiter looked all round and announced to +the room-- + +"The gentleman won't believe that Ziemianitch is drunk." + +>From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging to a horrible, +nondescript, shaggy being with a black face like the muzzle of a +bear grunted angrily-- + +"The cursed driver of thieves. What do we want with his +gentlemen here? We are all honest folk in this place." + +Razumov, biting his lip till blood came to keep himself from +bursting into imprecations, followed the owner of the den, who, +whispering "Come along, little father," led him into a tiny hole +of a place behind the wooden counter, whence proceeded a sound of +splashing. A wet and bedraggled creature, a sort of sexless +and shivering scarecrow, washed glasses in there, bending over a +wooden tub by the light of a tallow dip. + +"Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan said +plaintively. He had a brown, cunning little face, a thin greyish +beard. Trying to light a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast +and talked garrulously the while. + +He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no +lies told. And he would show him drunk. His woman, it seems, +ran away from him last night. "Such a hag she was! Thin! +Pfui!" He spat. They were always running away from that driver +of the devil--and he sixty years old too; could never get used to +it. But each heart knows sorrow after its own kind and +Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days. And then he would fly +to the bottle. "'Who could bear life in our land without the +bottle?' he says. A proper Russian man--the little pig. . . . +Be pleased to follow me." + +Razumov crossed a quadrangle of deep snow enclosed between high +walls with innumerable windows. Here and there a dim yellow +light hung within the four-square mass of darkness. The house +was an enormous slum, a hive of human vermin, a monumental abode +of misery towering on the verge of starvation and despair. + +In a corner the ground sloped sharply down, and Razumov followed +the light of the lantern through a small doorway into a long +cavernous place like a neglected subterranean byre. Deep within, +three shaggy little horses tied up to rings hung their heads +together, motionless and shadowy in the dim light of the lantern. +It must have been the famous team of Haldin's escape. Razumov +peered fearfully into the gloom. His guide pawed in the straw +with his foot. + +"Here he is. Ah! the little pigeon. A true Russian man. +'No heavy hearts for me,' he says. 'Bring out the bottle and +take your ugly mug out of my sight.' Ha! ha! ha! That's the +fellow he is." + +He held the lantern over a prone form of a man, apparently fully +dressed for outdoors. His head was lost in a pointed cloth hood. +On the other side of a heap of straw protruded a pair of feet in +monstrous thick boots. + +"Always ready to drive," commented the keeper of the +eating-house. "A proper Russian driver that. Saint or devil, +night or day is all one to Ziemianitch when his heart is free +from sorrow. 'I don't ask who you are, but where you want to +go,' he says. He would drive Satan himself to his own abode and +come back chirruping to his horses. Many a one he has driven who +is clanking his chains in the Nertchinsk mines by this time." + +Razumov shuddered. + +"Call him, wake him up," he faltered out. + +The other set down his light, stepped back and launched a kick at +the prostrate sleeper. The man shook at the impact but did not +move. At the third kick he grunted but remained inert as before. + +The eating-house keeper desisted and fetched a deep sigh. + +"You see for yourself how it is. We have done what we can for +you." + +He picked up the lantern. The intense black spokes of shadow +swung about in the circle of light. A terrible fury--the blind +rage of self-preservation--possessed Razumov. + +"Ah! The vile beast," he bellowed out in an unearthly tone +which made the lantern jump and tremble! "I shall wake you! +Give me . . . Give me . . ." + +He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a stablefork and +rushing forward struck at the prostrate body with +inarticulate cries. After a time his cries ceased, and the rain +of blows fell in the stillness and shadows of the cellar-like +stable. Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch with an insatiable fury, +in great volleys of sounding thwacks. Except for the violent +movements of Razumov nothing stirred, neither the beaten man nor +the spoke-like shadows on the walls. And only the sound of blows +was heard. It was a weird scene. + +Suddenly there was a sharp crack. The stick broke and half of it +flew far away into the gloom beyond the light. At the same time +Ziemianitch sat up. At this Razumov became as motionless as the +man with the lantern--only his breast heaved for air as if ready +to burst. + +Some dull sensation of pain must have penetrated at last the +consoling night of drunkenness enwrapping the "bright Russian +soul" of Haldin's enthusiastic praise. But Ziemianitch evidently +saw nothing. His eyeballs blinked all white in the light once, +twice--then the gleam went out. For a moment he sat in the straw +with closed eyes with a strange air of weary meditation, then +fell over slowly on his side without making the slightest sound. +Only the straw rustled a little. Razumov stared wildly, fighting +for his breath. After a second or two he heard a light snore. + +He flung from him the piece of stick remaining in his grasp, and +went off with great hasty strides without looking back once. + +After going heedlessly for some fifty yards along the street he +walked into a snowdrift and was up to his knees before he stopped. + +This recalled him to himself; and glancing about he discovered he +had been going in the wrong direction. He retraced his steps, but +now at a more moderate pace. When passing before the house he had +just left he flourished his fist at the sombre refuge of +misery and crime rearing its sinister bulk on the white ground. +It had an air of brooding. He let his arm fall by his +side--discouraged. + +Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and consolation had +baffled him. That was the people. A true Russian man! Razumov +was glad he had beaten that brute--the "bright soul" of the +other. Here they were: the people and the enthusiast. + +Between the two he was done for. Between the drunkenness of the +peasant incapable of action and the dream-intoxication of the +idealist incapable of perceiving the reason of things, and the +true character of men. It was a sort of terrible childishness. +But children had their masters. "Ah! the stick, the stick, the +stern hand," thought Razumov, longing for power to hurt and +destroy. + +He was glad he had thrashed that brute. The physical exertion +had left his body in a comfortable glow. His mental agitation +too was clarified as if all the feverishness had gone out of him +in a fit of outward violence. Together with the persisting sense +of terrible danger he was conscious now of a tranquil, +unquenchable hate. + +He walked slower and slower. And indeed, considering the guest +he had in his rooms, it was no wonder he lingered on the way. It +was like harbouring a pestilential disease that would not perhaps +take your life, but would take from you all that made life worth +living --a subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell. + +What was he doing now? Lying on the bed as if dead, with the +back of his hands over his eyes? Razumov had a morbidly vivid +vision of Haldin on his bed--the white pillow hollowed by the +head, the legs in long boots, the upturned feet. And in his +abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll kill him when I get home." +But he knew very well that that was of no use. The corpse +hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal as the living +man. Nothing short of complete annihilation would do. And that +was impossible. What then? Must one kill oneself to escape this +visitation? + +Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with hate to accept +that issue. + +And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the thought of having to +live with Haldin for an indefinite number of days in mortal alarm +at every sound. But perhaps when he heard that this "bright +soul" of Ziemianitch suffered from a drunken eclipse the fellow +would take his infernal resignation somewhere else. And that was +not likely on the face of it. + +Razumov thought:"I am being crushed--and I can't even run away." +Other men had somewhere a corner of the earth--some little house +in the provinces where they had a right to take their troubles. +A material refuge. He had nothing. He had not even a moral +refuge--the refuge of confidence. To whom could he go with this +tale--in all this great, great land? + +Razumov stamped his foot--and under the soft carpet of snow felt +the hard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen +and tragic mother hiding her face under a winding-sheet--his +native soil!--his very own--without a fireside, without a heart! + +He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to +fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the +clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the +sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy fit for the +resplendent purity of the snows. + +Razumov received an almost physical impression of endless space +and of countless millions. + +He responded to it with the readiness of a Russian who is born to +an inheritance of space and numbers. Under the sumptuous +immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless forests, +the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, obliterating +the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, levelling everything +under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous blank page awaiting +the record of an inconceivable history. It covered the passive +land with its lives of countless people like Ziemianitch and its +handful of agitators like this Haldin --murdering foolishly. + +It was a sort of sacred inertia. Razumov felt a respect for it. +A voice seemed to cry within him, "Don't touch it." It was a +guarantee of duration, of safety, while the travail of maturing +destiny went on--a work not of revolutions with their passionate +levity of action and their shifting impulses--but of peace. What +it needed was not the conflicting aspirations of a people, but a +will strong and one: it wanted not the babble of many voices, but +a man--strong and one! + +Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He was fascinated by +its approach, by its overpowering logic. For a train of thought +is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of +existence, in secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the +secret confidence combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, +in the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days. + +In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied +aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the +vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the +land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic +conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the +faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest. Like +other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict with himself, +felt the touch of grace upon his forehead. + +"Haldin means disruption," he thought to himself, beginning to +walk again. "What is he with his indignation, with his talk +of bondage--with his talk of God's justice? All that means +disruption. Better that thousands should suffer than that a +people should become a disintegrated mass, helpless like dust in +the wind. Obscurantism is better than the light of incendiary +torches. The seed germinates in the night. Out of the dark soil +springs the perfect plant. But a volcanic eruption is sterile, +the ruin of the fertile ground. And am I, who love my +country--who have nothing but that to love and put my faith +in--am I to have my future, perhaps my usefulness, ruined by this +sanguinary fanatic?" + +The grace entered into Razumov. He believed now in the man who +would come at the appointed time. + +What is a throne? A few pieces of wood upholstered in velvet. +But a throne is a seat of power too. The form of government is +the shape of a tool--an instrument. But twenty thousand bladders +inflated by the noblest sentiments and jostling against each +other in the air are a miserable incumbrance of space, holding no +power, possessing no will, having nothing to give. + +He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a discourse with +himself with extraordinary abundance and facility. Generally his +phrases came to him slowly, after a conscious and painstaking +wooing. Some superior power had inspired him with a flow of +masterly argument as certain converted sinners become +overwhelmingly loquacious. + +He felt an austere exultation. + +"What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that fellow to the +clear grasp of my intellect?" he thought. "Is not this my +country? Have I not got forty million brothers?" he asked +himself, unanswerably victorious in the silence of his breast. +And the fearful thrashing he had given the inanimate Ziemianitch +seemed to him a sign of intimate union, a pathetically severe +necessity of brotherly love. "No! If I must suffer let me at +least suffer for my convictions, not for a crime my reason --my +cool superior reason--rejects." + +He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in his breast was +complete. But he felt a suspicious uneasiness, such as we may +experience when we enter an unlighted strange place--the +irrational feeling that something may jump upon us in the +dark--the absurd dread of the unseen. + +Of course he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary. +Everything was not for the best. Despotic bureaucracy. . . +abuses. . .corruption. . .and so on. Capable men were wanted. +Enlightened intelligences. Devoted hearts. But absolute power +should be preserved --the tool ready for the man--for the great +autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in him. The logic of +history made him unavoidable. The state of the people demanded +him, "What else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move all that +mass in one direction? Nothing could. Nothing but a single will." + +He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his personal longings of +liberalism--rejecting the attractive error for the stern Russian +truth. "That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and added, +"There's no stopping midway on that road," and then remarked to +himself, "I am not a coward." + +And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's breast. He +walked with lowered head, making room for no one. He walked +slowly and his thoughts returning spoke within him with solemn +slowness. + +"What is this Haldin? And what am I? Only two grains of sand. +But a great mountain is made up of just such insignificant +grains. And the death of a man or of many men is an +insignificant thing. Yet we combat a contagious pestilence. +Do I want his death? No! I would save him if I could--but no +one can do that--he is the withered member which must be cut off. +If I must perish through him, let me at least not perish with +him, and associated against my will with his sombre folly that +understands nothing either of men or things. Why should I leave +a false memory?" + +It passed through his mind that there was no one in the world who +cared what sort of memory he left behind him. He exclaimed to +himself instantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood! . . . What a +miserable fate!" + +He was now in a more animated part of the town. He did not +remark the crash of two colliding sledges close to the curb. +The driver of one bellowed tearfully at his fellow-- +"Oh, thou vile wretch!" + +This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear, disturbed Razumov. +He shook his head impatiently and went on looking straight before +him. Suddenly on the snow, stretched on his back right across +his path, he saw Haldin, solid, distinct, real, with his inverted +hands over his eyes, clad in a brown close-fitting coat and long +boots. He was lying out of the way a little, as though he had +selected that place on purpose. The snow round him was untrodden. + +This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first +movement of Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself +that the key of his rooms was there. But he checked the impulse +with a disdainful curve of his lips. He understood. His +thought, concentrated intensely on the figure left lying on his +bed, had culminated in this extraordinary illusion of the sight. +Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly. With a stern face, +without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked on, +experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest. +After passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the +unbroken track of his footsteps over the place where the breast +of the phantom had been lying. + +Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder to +himself. + +"Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And right in my way too! +I have had an extraordinary experience." + +He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth-- + +"I shall give him up." + +Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank. He wrapped his +cloak closer round him. He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes. + +"Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They talk of a man +betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must +be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience. +And how is my conscience engaged here; by what bond of common +faith, of common conviction, am I obliged to let that fanatical +idiot drag me down with him? On the contrary--every obligation +of true courage is the other way." + +Razumov looked round from under his cap. + +"What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with? Have I +provoked his confidence? No! Have I by a single word, look, or +gesture given him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in +me? No! It is true that I consented to go and see his +Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to see him. And I broke a stick +on his back too--the brute." + +Something seemed to turn over in his head bringing uppermost a +singularly hard, clear facet of his brain. + +"It would be better, however," he reflected with a quite different +mental accent, "to keep that circumstance altogether to myself." + +He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had +reached a wide and fashionable street. Some shops were still +open, and all the restaurants. Lights fell on the pavement where +men in expensive fur coats, with here and there the elegant +figure of a woman, walked with an air of leisure. Razumov looked +at them with the contempt of an austere believer for the +frivolous crowd. It was the world--those officers, dignitaries, +men of fashion, officials, members of the Yacht Club. The event +of the morning affected them all. What would they say if they +knew what this student in a cloak was going to do? + +"Not one of them is capable of feeling and thinking as deeply as +I can. How many of them could accomplish an act of conscience?" + +Razumov lingered in the well-lighted street. He was firmly +decided. Indeed, it could hardly be called a decision. He had +simply discovered what he had meant to do all along. And yet he +felt the need of some other mind's sanction. + +With something resembling anguish he said to himself-- + +"I want to be understood." The universal aspiration with all its +profound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, +amongst eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to +which he could open himself. + +The attorney was not to be thought of. He despised the little +agent of chicane too much. One could not go and lay one's +conscience before the policeman at the corner. Neither was +Razumov anxious to go to the chief of his district's police--a +common-looking person whom he used to see sometimes in the +street in a shabby uniform and with a smouldering cigarette stuck +to his lower lip. "He would begin by locking me up most +probably. At any rate, he is certain to get excited and create +an awful commotion," thought Razumov practically + +An act of conscience must be done with outward dignity. + +Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral +support. Who knows what true loneliness is --not the +conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely +themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some +memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of +events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. +No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without +going mad. + +Razumov had reached that point of vision. To escape from it he +embraced for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to +his lodgings and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the +bed with the dark figure stretched on it; to pour out a full +confession in passionate words that would stir the whole being of +that man to its innermost depths; that would end in embraces and +tears; in an incredible fellowship of souls --such as the world +had never seen. It was sublime! + +Inwardly he wept and trembled already. But to the casual eyes +that were cast upon him he was aware that he appeared as a +tranquil student in a cloak, out for a leisurely stroll. +He noted, too, the sidelong, brilliant glance of a pretty +woman--with a delicate head, and covered in the hairy skins +of wild beasts down to her feet, like a frail and beautiful +savage--which rested for a moment with a sort of mocking tenderness +on the deep abstraction of that good-looking young man. + +Suddenly Razumov stood still. The glimpse of a passing grey +whisker, caught and lost in the same instant, had evoked the +complete image of Prince K---, the man who once had pressed his +hand as no other man had pressed it--a faint but lingering +pressure like a secret sign, like a half-unwilling caress. + +And Razumov marvelled at himself. Why did he not think of him before! + +"A senator, a dignitary, a great personage, the very man--He!" + +A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--made his knees +shake a little. He repressed it with a new-born austerity. All +that sentiment was pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick +enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted to the driver-- + +"TotheK--- Palace. Get on--you! Fly!" The startled moujik, +bearded up to the very whites of his eyes, answered obsequiously-- + +"I hear, your high Nobility." + +It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K ---was not a man of timid +character. On the day of Mr. de P---'s murder an extreme alarm +and despondency prevailed in the high official spheres. +Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study, was told by his +alarmed servants that a mysterious young man had forced his way +into the hall, refused to tell his name and the nature of his +business, and would not move from there till he had seen his +Excellency in private. Instead of locking himself up and +telephoning for the police, as nine out of ten high personages +would have done that evening, the Prince gave way to curiosity +and came quietly to the door of his study. + +In the hall, the front door standing wide open, he recognised at +once Razumov, pale as death, his eyes blazing, and surrounded by +perplexed lackeys. + +The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even indignant. But +his humane instincts and a subtle sense of self-respect could not +allow him to let this young man be thrown out into the street by +base menials. He retreated unseen into his room, and after a +little rang his bell. Razumov heard in the hall an ominously +raised harsh voice saying somewhere far away-- + +"Show the gentleman in here." + +Razumov walked in without a tremor. He felt himself +invulnerable--raised far above the shallowness of common +judgment. Though he saw the Prince looking at him with black +displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which he was very +conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance. He was not +asked to sit down. + +Half an hour later they appeared in the hall together. The lackeys +stood up, and the Prince, moving with difficulty on his +gouty feet, was helped into his furs. The carriage had been +ordered before. When the great double door was flung open with a +crash, Razumov, who had been standing silent with a lost gaze but +with every faculty intensely on the alert, heard the Prince's voice-- + +"Your arm, young man." + +The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards officer, man of +showy missions, experienced in nothing but the arts of gallant +intrigue and worldly success, had been equally impressed by the +more obvious difficulties of such a situation and by Razumov's +quiet dignity in stating them. + +He had said, "No. Upon the whole I can't condemn the step you +ventured to take by coming to me with your story. It is not an +affair for police understrappers. The greatest importance is +attached to. . .Set your mind at rest. I shall see you through +this most extraordinary and difficult situation." + +Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and Razumov, making a +short bow, had said with deference-- + +"I have trusted my instinct. A young man having no claim upon +anybody in the world has in an hour of trial involving his +deepest political convictions turned to an illustrious +Russian--that's all." + +The Prince had exclaimed hastily-- + +"You have done well." + +In the carriage--it was a small brougham on sleigh runners-- +Razumov broke the silence in a voice that trembled slightly. + +"My gratitude surpasses the greatness of my presumption." + +He gasped, feeling unexpectedly in the dark a momentary pressure +on his arm. + +"You have done well," repeated the Prince. + +When the carriage stopped the Prince murmured to Razumov, who had +never ventured a single question-- + +"The house of General T---." + +In the middle of the snow-covered roadway blazed a great bonfire. +Some Cossacks, the bridles of their horses over the arm, were +warming themselves around. Two sentries stood at the door, +several gendarmes lounged under the great carriage gateway, and +on the first-floor landing two orderlies rose and stood at +attention. Razumov walked at the Prince's elbow. + +A surprising quantity of hot-house plants in pots cumbered the +floor of the ante-room. Servants came forward. A young man in +civilian clothes arrived hurriedly, was whispered to, bowed low, +and exclaiming zealously, "Certainly--this minute," fled within +somewhere. The Prince signed to Razumov. + +They passed through a suite of reception-rooms all barely lit and +one of them prepared for dancing. The wife of the General had +put off her party. An atmosphere of consternation pervaded the place. +But the General's own room, with heavy sombre hangings, two massive desks, +and deep armchairs, had all the lights turned on. The footman shut the +door behind them and they waited. + +There was a coal fire in an English grate; Razumov had never +before seen such a fire; and the silence of the room was like the +silence of the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the clock on +the mantelpiece made no sound. Filling a corner, on a black +pedestal, stood a quarter-life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an +adolescent figure, running. The Prince observed in an undertone- + +"Spontini's. 'Flight of Youth.' Exquisite." + +"Admirable," assented Razumov faintly. + +They said nothing more after this, the Prince silent with his +grand air, Razumov staring at the statue. He was worried by a +sensation resembling the gnawing of hunger. + +He did not turn when he heard an inner door fly open, and a quick +footstep, muffled on the carpet. + +The Prince's voice immediately exclaimed, thick with excitement-- + +"We have got him--_ce miserable._ A worthy young man came to me-- +No! It's incredible. . ." + +Razumov held his breath before the bronze as if expecting a +crash. Behind his back a voice he had never heard before +insisted politely-- + +"_Asseyez-vous donc_." + +The Prince almost shrieked, "_Mais comprenez-vous, mon cher! +L'assassin!_ the murderer --we have got him. . ." + +Razumov spun round. The General's smooth big cheeks rested on +the stiff collar of his uniform. He must have been already +looking at Razumov, because that last saw the pale blue eyes +fastened on him coldly. + +The Prince from a chair waved an impressive hand. + +"This is a most honourable young man whom Providence +itself. . .Mr. Razumov." + +The General acknowledged the introduction by frowning at Razumov, +who did not make the slightest movement. + +Sitting down before his desk the General listened with compressed lips. +It was impossible to detect any sign of emotion on his face. + +Razumov watched the immobility of the fleshy profile. But it +lasted only a moment, till the Prince had finished; and when the +General turned to the providential young man, his florid +complexion, the blue, unbelieving eyes and the bright white flash +of an automatic smile had an air of jovial, careless cruelty. He +expressed no wonder at the extraordinary story--no pleasure or +excitement--no incredulity either. He betrayed no sentiment +whatever. Only with a politeness almost deferential suggested +that "the bird might have flown while Mr.--Mr. Razumov was +running about the streets." + +Razumov advanced to the middle of the room and said, "The door is +locked and I have the key in my pocket." + +His loathing for the man was intense. It had come upon him so +unawares that he felt he had not kept it out of his voice. The +General looked up at him thoughtfully, and Razumov grinned. + +All this went over the head of Prince K ---seated in a deep +armchair, very tired and impatient. + +"A student called Haldin," said the General thoughtfully. + +Razumov ceased to grin. + +"That is his name," he said unnecessarily loud. "Victor +Victorovitch Haldin--a student." + +The General shifted his position a little. + +"How is he dressed? Would you have the goodness to tell me?" + +Razumov angrily described Haldin's clothing in a few jerky words. +The General stared all the time, then addressing the Prince-- + +"We were not without some indications," he said in French. "A +good woman who was in the street described to us somebody wearing +a dress of the sort as the thrower of the second bomb. We have +detained her at the Secretariat, and every one in a Tcherkess +coat we could lay our hands on has been brought to her to look +at. She kept on crossing herself and shaking her head at them. +It was exasperating. . . ." He turned to Razumov, and in +Russian, with friendly reproach-- + +"Take a chair, Mr. Razumov--do. Why are you standing?" + +Razumov sat down carelessly and looked at the General. + +"This goggle-eyed imbecile understands nothing," he thought. + +The Prince began to speak loftily. + +"Mr. Razumov is a young man of conspicuous abilities. I have it +at heart that his future should not. . . ." + +"Certainly," interrupted the General, with a movement of the +hand. "Has he any weapons on him, do you think, Mr. Razumov?" + +The General employed a gentle musical voice. Razumov answered +with suppressed irritation-- + +"No. But my razors are lying about--you understand." + +The General lowered his head approvingly. + +"Precisely." + +Then to the Prince, explaining courteously-- + +"We want that bird alive. It will be the devil if we can't make +him sing a little before we are done with him." + +The grave-like silence of the room with its mute clock fell upon +the polite modulations of this terrible phrase. The Prince, +hidden in the chair, made no sound. + +The General unexpectedly developed a thought. + +"Fidelity to menaced institutions on which depend the safety of a +throne and of a people is no child's play. We know that, _mon +Prince,_ and--_tenez_--"he went on with a sort of flattering +harshness, "Mr. Razumov here begins to understand that too." + +His eyes which he turned upon Razumov seemed to be starting out +of his head. This grotesqueness of aspect no longer shocked +Razumov. He said with gloomy conviction-- + +"Haldin will never speak." + +"That remains to be seen," muttered the General. + +"I am certain," insisted Razumov. "A man like this never +speaks. . . . Do you imagine that I am here from fear?" he added +violently. He felt ready to stand by his opinion of Haldin to +the last extremity. + +"Certainly not," protested the General, with great simplicity of +tone. "And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Razumov, that if he had +not come with his tale to such a staunch and loyal Russian as +you, he would have disappeared like a stone in the water . . . +which would have had a detestable effect," he added, with a +bright, cruel smile under his stony stare. "So you see, there +can be no suspicion of any fear here." + +The Prince intervened, looking at Razumov round the back of the +armchair. + +"Nobody doubts the moral soundness of your action. Be at ease in +that respect, pray." + +He turned to the General uneasily. + +"That's why I am here. You may be surprised why I should . . ." + +The General hastened to interrupt. + +"Not at all. Extremely natural. You saw the importance. . . + +"Yes," broke in the Prince. "And I venture to ask insistently +that mine and Mr. Razumov's intervention should not become +public. He is a young man of promise--of remarkable aptitudes." + +"I haven't a doubt of it," murmured the General. "He inspires +confidence." + +"All sorts of pernicious views are so widespread nowadays--they +taint such unexpected quarters--that, monstrous as it seems, he +might suffer. . . . His studies. . . . His. . ." + +The General, with his elbows on the desk, took his head between +his hands. + +"Yes. Yes. I am thinking it out. . . . How long is it since +you left him at your rooms, Mr. Razumov?" + +Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly corresponded with the +time of his distracted flight from the big slum house. He had +made up his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair +completely. To mention him at all would mean imprisonment for +the "bright soul," perhaps cruel floggings, and in the end a +journey to Siberia in chains. Razumov, who had beaten +Ziemianitch, felt for him now a vague, remorseful tenderness. + +The General,giving way for the first time to his secret +sentiments, exclaimed contemptuously-- + +"And you say he came in to make you this confidence like +this--for nothing--_a propos des bottes_." + +Razumov felt danger in the air. The merciless suspicion of +despotism had spoken openly at last. Sudden fear sealed +Razumov's lips. The silence of the room resembled now the +silence of a deep dungeon, where time does not count, and a +suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever. But the Prince +came to the rescue. + +"Providence itself has led the wretch in a moment of mental +aberration to seek Mr. Razumov on the strength of some old, +utterly misinterpreted exchange of ideas--some sort of idle +speculative conversation--months ago--I am told--and completely +forgotten till now by Mr. Razumov." + +"Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively, after a short +silence, "do you often indulge in speculative conversation?" + +"No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a sudden access of +self-confidence. "I am a man of deep convictions. Crude +opinions are in the air. They are not always worth combating. +But even the silent contempt of a serious mind may be +misinterpreted by headlong utopists." + +The General stared from between his hands. Prince K--- +murmured-- + +"A serious young man. _Un esprit superieur_." + +"I see that, _mon cher Prince_," said the General. "Mr. Razumov +is quite safe with me. I am interested in him. He has, it +seems, the great and useful quality of inspiring confidence. +What I was wondering at is why the other should mention anything +at all--I mean even the bare fact alone--if his object was only +to obtain temporary shelter for a few hours. For, after all, +nothing was easier than to say nothing about it unless, indeed, +he were trying, under a crazy misapprehension of your true +sentiments, to enlist your assistance--eh, Mr. Razumov?" + +It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving slightly. +This grotesque man in a tight uniform was terrible. It was right +that he should be terrible. + +"I can see what your Excellency has in your mind. But I can only +answer that I don't know why." + +"I have nothing in my mind," murmured the General, with gentle +surprise. + +"I am his prey--his helpless prey," thought Razumov. The +fatigues and the disgusts of that afternoon, the need to forget, +the fear which he could not keep off, reawakened his hate for +Haldin. + +"Then I can't help your Excellency. I don't know what he meant. +I only know there was a moment when I wished to kill him. There +was also a moment when I wished myself dead. I said nothing. I +was overcome. I provoked no confidence--I asked for no +explanations--" + +Razumov seemed beside himself; but his mind was lucid. It was +really a calculated outburst. + +"It is rather a pity," the General said, "that you did not. +Don't you know at all what he means to do?" Razumov calmed down +and saw an opening there. + +"He told me he was in hopes that a sledge would meet him about +half an hour after midnight at the seventh lamp-post on the left +from the upper end of Karabelnaya. At any rate, he meant to be +there at that time. He did not even ask me for a change of +clothes." +"_Ah voila_!" said the General, turning to Prince K with an air +of satisfaction. "There is a way to keep your _protege_, Mr. +Razumov, quite clear of any connexion with the actual arrest. We +shall be ready for that gentleman in Karabelnaya." + +The Prince expressed his gratitude. There was real emotion in +his voice. Razumov, motionless, silent, sat staring at the +carpet. The General turned to him. + +"Half an hour after midnight. Till then we have to depend on +you, Mr. Razumov. You don't think he is likely to change his +purpose?" + +"How can I tell?" said Razumov. "Those men are not of the sort +that ever changes its purpose." + +"What men do you mean?" + +"Fanatical lovers of liberty in general. Liberty with a capital +L, Excellency. Liberty that means nothing precise. Liberty in +whose name crimes are committed." + +The General murmured-- + +"I detest rebels of every kind. I can't help it. It's my nature!" + +He clenched a fist and shook it, drawing back his arm. "They shall +be destroyed, then." + +"They have made a sacrifice of their lives beforehand," said +Razumov with malicious pleasure and looking the General straight +in the face. "If Haldin does change his purpose to-night, you +may depend on it that it will not be to save his life by flight +in some other way. He would have thought then of something else +to attempt. But that is not likely." + +The General repeated as if to himself, "They shall be destroyed." + +Razumov assumed an impenetrable expression. + +The Prince exclaimed-- + +"What a terrible necessity!" + +The General's arm was lowered slowly. + +"One comfort there is. That brood leaves no posterity. I've +always said it, one effort, pitiless, persistent, steady--and we +are done with them for ever." + +Razumov thought to himself that this man entrusted with so much +arbitrary power must have believed what he said or else he could +not have gone on bearing the responsibility. + +"I detest rebels. These subversive minds! These intellectual +_debauches_! My existence has been built on fidelity. It's a feeling. +To defend it I am ready to lay down my life--and even my honour--if +that were needed. But pray tell me what honour can there be as against +rebels--against people that deny God Himself--perfect unbelievers! +Brutes. It is horrible to think of." + +During this tirade Razumov, facing the General, had nodded +slightly twice. Prince K---, standing on one side with his grand +air, murmured, casting up his eyes-- + +"_Helas!_" + +Then lowering his glance and with great decision declared-- + +"This young man, General, is perfectly fit to apprehend the +bearing of your memorable words." + +The General's whole expression changed from dull resentment to +perfect urbanity. + +"I would ask now, Mr. Razumov," he said, "to return to his home. +Note that I don't ask Mr. Razumov whether he has justified his +absence to his guest. No doubt he did this sufficiently. But I +don't ask. Mr. Razumov inspires confidence. It is a great gift. +I only suggest that a more prolonged absence might awaken the +criminal's suspicions and induce him perhaps to change his +plans." + +He rose and with a scrupulous courtesy escorted his visitors to +the ante-room encumbered with flower-pots. + +Razumov parted with the Prince at the corner of a street. In the +carriage he had listened to speeches where natural sentiment +struggled with caution. Evidently the Prince was afraid of +encouraging any hopes of future intercourse. But there was a +touch of tenderness in the voice uttering in the dark the guarded +general phrases of goodwill. And the Prince too said-- + +"I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Razumov." + +"They all, it seems, have confidence in me," thought Razumov +dully. He had an indulgent contempt for the man sitting shoulder +to shoulder with him in the confined space. Probably he was afraid +of scenes with his wife. She was said to be proud and violent. + +It seemed to him bizarre that secrecy should play such a large +part in the comfort and safety of lives. But he wanted to put +the Prince's mind at ease; and with a proper amount of emphasis +he said that, being conscious of some small abilities and +confident in his power of work, he trusted his future to his own +exertions. He expressed his gratitude for the helping hand. +Such dangerous situations did not occur twice in the course of +one life--he added. + +"And you have met this one with a firmness of mind and +correctness of feeling which give me a high idea of your worth," +the Prince said solemnly. "You have now only to persevere--to +persevere." + +On getting out on the pavement Razumov saw an ungloved hand +extended to him through the lowered window of the brougham. It +detained his own in its grasp for a moment, while the light of a +street lamp fell upon the Prince's long face and old-fashioned +grey whiskers. + +"I hope you are perfectly reassured now as to the consequences. . ." + +"After what your Excellency has condescended to do for me, +I can only rely on my conscience." + +"_Adieu_," said the whiskered head with feeling. + +Razumov bowed. The brougham glided away with a slight swish in +the snow--he was alone on the edge of the pavement. + +He said to himself that there was nothing to think about, and +began walking towards his home. + +He walked quietly. It was a common experience to walk thus +home to bed after an evening spent somewhere with his fellows or +in the cheaper seats of a theatre. After he had gone a little +way the familiarity of things got hold of him. Nothing was +changed. There was the familiar corner; and when he turned it he +saw the familiar dim light of the provision shop kept by a German +woman. There were loaves of stale bread, bunches of onions and +strings of sausages behind the small window-panes. They were +closing it. The sickly lame fellow whom he knew so well by sight +staggered out into the snow embracing a large shutter. + +Nothing would change. There was the familiar gateway yawning +black with feeble glimmers marking the arches of the different +staircases. + +The sense of life's continuity depended on trifling bodily +impressions. The trivialities of daily existence were an armour +for the soul. And this thought reinforced the inward quietness +of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet +in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister. The +exceptional could not prevail against the material contacts which +make one day resemble another. To-morrow would be like yesterday. + +It was only on the stage that the unusual was outwardly acknowledged. + +"I suppose," thought Razumov, "that if I had made up my mind to +blow out my brains on the landing I would be going up these +stairs as quietly as I am doing it now. What's a man to do? +What must be must be. Extraordinary things do happen. But when +they have happened they are done with. Thus, too, when the mind +is made up. That question is done with. And the daily concerns, +the familiarities of our thought swallow it up--and the life goes +on as before with its mysterious and secret sides quite out +of sight, as they should be. Life is a public thing." + +Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out; entered very +quietly and bolted the door behind him carefully. + +He thought, "He hears me," and after bolting the door he stood +still holding his breath. There was not a sound. He crossed the +bare outer room, stepping deliberately in the darkness. Entering +the other, he felt all over his table for the matchbox. The +silence, but for the groping of his hand, was profound. Could +the fellow be sleeping so soundly? + +He struck a light and looked at the bed. Haldin was lying on +his back as before, only both his hands were under his head. +His eyes were open. He stared at the ceiling. + +Razumov held the match up. He saw the clear-cut features, the +firm chin, the white forehead and the topknot of fair hair +against the white pillow. There he was, lying flat on his back. +Razumov thought suddenly, "I have walked over his chest." + +He continued to stare till the match burnt itself out; then +struck another and lit the lamp in silence without looking +towards the bed any more. He had turned his back on it and was +hanging his coat on a peg when he heard Haldin sigh profoundly, +then ask in a tired voice-- + +"Well! And what have you arranged?" + +The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad to put his hands +against the wall. A diabolical impulse to say, "I have given you +up to the police," frightened him exceedingly. But he did not +say that. He said, without turning round, in a muffled voice-- + +"It's done." + +Again he heard Haldin sigh. He walked to the table, sat down +with the lamp before him, and only then looked towards the bed. + +In the distant corner of the large room far away from the lamp, +which was small and provided with a very thick china shade, +Haldin appeared like a dark and elongated shape--rigid with the +immobility of death. This body seemed to have less substance +than its own phantom walked over by Razumov in the street white +with snow. It was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent +reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion. + +Haldin was heard again. + +"You must have had a walk--such a walk. . ." he murmured +deprecatingly." This weather. . ." + +Razumov answered with energy-- + +"Horrible walk. . . . A nightmare of a walk." + +He shuddered audibly. Haldin sighed once more, then-- + +"And so you have seen Ziemianitch--brother?" + +"I've seen him." + +Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with the Prince, +thought it prudent to add, "I had to wait some time." + +"A character--eh? It's extraordinary what a sense of the +necessity of freedom there is in that man. And he has sayings +too--simple, to the point, such as only the people can invent in +their rough sagacity. A character that. . ." + +"I, you understand, haven't had much opportunity. . ." Razumov +muttered through his teeth. + +Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling. + +"You see, brother, I have been a good deal in that house of +late. I used to take there books--leaflets. Not a few of the +poor people who live there can read. And, you see, the guests +for the feast of freedom must be sought for in byways and hedges. +The truth is, I have almost lived in that house of late. I slept +sometimes in the stable. There is a stable. . ." + +"That's where I had my interview with Ziemianitch," interrupted +Razumov gently. A mocking spirit entered into him and he added, +"It was satisfactory in a sense. I came away from it much relieved." + +"Ah! he's a fellow," went on Haldin, talking slowly at the +ceiling. "I came to know him in that way, you see. For some +weeks now, ever since I resigned myself to do what had to be +done, I tried to isolate myself. I gave up my rooms. What was +the good of exposing a decent widow woman to the risk of being +worried out of her mind by the police? I gave up seeing any of +our comrades. . ." + +Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper and began to trace +lines on it with a pencil. + +"Upon my word," he thought angrily, "he seems to have thought of +everybody's safety but mine." + +Haldin was talking on. + +"This morning--ah! this morning--that was different. How can I +explain to you? Before the deed was done I wandered at night and +lay hid in the day, thinking it out, and I felt restful. +Sleepless but restful. What was there for me to torment myself +about? But this morning--after! Then it was that I became +restless. I could not have stopped in that big house full of +misery. The miserable of this world can't give you peace. +Then when that silly caretaker began to shout, I said to myself, +'There is a young man in this town head and shoulders above +common prejudices.'" + +"Is he laughing at mei?" .Razumov asked himself, going on with +his aimless drawing of triangles and squares. And suddenly he +thought: "My behaviour must appear to him strange. Should he +take fright at my manner and rush off somewhere I shall be +undone completely. That infernal General. . ." + +He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with +the shadowy figure extended full length on it--so much more +indistinct than the one over whose breast he had walked without +faltering. Was this, too, a phantom? + +The silence had lasted a long time. "He is no longer here," was +the thought against which Razumov struggled desperately, quite +frightened at its absurdity. "He is already gone and this. . . +only. . ." + +He could resist no longer. He sprang to his feet, saying aloud, +"I am intolerably anxious," and in a few headlong strides stood +by the side of the bed. His hand fell lightly on Haldin's +shoulder, and directly he felt its reality he was beset by an +insane temptation to grip that exposed throat and squeeze the +breath out of that body, lest it should escape his custody, +leaving only a phantom behind. + +Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed eyes moving a +little gazed upwards at Razumov with wistful gratitude for this +manifestation of feeling. + +Razumov turned away and strode up and down the room. "It would +have been possibly a kindness," he muttered to himself, and was +appalled by the nature of that apology for a murderous intention +his mind had found somewhere within him. And all the same he +could not give it up. He became lucid about it. "What can he +expecti?" he thought. "The halter--in the end. And I. . ." + +This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice. + +"Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body, but they cannot +exile my soul from this world. I tell you what--I believe in +this world so much that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than +as a very long life. That is perhaps the reason I am so +ready to die." + +"H'm,"muttered Razumov,and biting hislower lip he continued to +walk up and down and to carry on his strange argument. + +Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it would be an act +of kindness. The question, however, was not how to be kind, but +how to be firm. He was a slippery customer + +"I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this world of ours," he +said with force. "I too, while I live. . . . But you seem +determined to haunt it. You can't seriously. . .mean" + +The voice of the motionless Haldin began-- + +"Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought which quickens the +world, the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of +human dignity, they shall be haunted. As to the destroyers of my +mere body, I have forgiven them beforehand." + +Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at the same time he +was observing his own sensations. He was vexed with himself for +attaching so much importance to what Haldin said. + +"The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this opinion did not +mollify him towards Haldin. It was a particularly impudent form +of lunacy--and when it got loose in the sphere of public life of +a country, it was obviously the duty of every good citizen. . . + +This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by +a paroxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that +Razumov hastened to speak at random. + +"Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very well represent +it to myself. . . . I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. +There would be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The element of time +would be wanting." + +He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on +his side and looked on intently. + +Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer +this fellow with a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He +hastened on-- + +"And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in +Eternity? Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are +secrets of birth, for instance. One carries them on to the +grave. There is something comical. . .but never mind. And there +are secret motives of conduct. A man's most open actions have a +secret side to them. That is interesting and so unfathomable! +For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk. Nothing more +trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He comes +back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular +notice of the snow on the ground--and behold he is no longer the +same man. The most unlikely things have a secret power over +one's thoughts--the grey whiskers of a particular person--the +goggle eyes of another." + +Razumov's forehead was moist. He took a turn or two in the room, +his head low and smiling to himself viciously. + +"Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey +whiskers? Excuse me. You seem to think I must be crazy to talk +in this vein at such a time. But I am not talking lightly. I +have seen instances. It has happened to me once to be talking to +a man whose fate was affected by physical facts of that kind. +And the man did not know it. Of course, it was a case of +conscience, but the material facts such as these brought about +the solution. . . . And you tell me, Victor Victorovitch, +not to be anxious! Why! I am responsible for you," +Razumov almost shrieked. + +He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter. +Haldin, very pale, raised himself on his elbow. + +"And the surprises of life," went on Razumov, after glancing at +the other uneasily. "Just consider their astonishing nature. A +mysterious impulse induces you to come here. I don't say you +have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain point of view you could +not have done better. You might have gone to a man with +affections and family ties. You have such ties yourself. As to +me, you know I have been brought up in an educational institute +where they did not give us enough to eat. To talk of affection +in such a connexion--you perceive yourself. . . . As to ties, +the only ties I have in the world are social. I must get +acknowledged in some way before I can act at all. I sit here +working. . . . And don't you think I am working for progress too? +I've got to find my own ideas of the true way. . . . Pardon me," +continued Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short, throaty +laugh, "but I haven't inherited a revolutionary inspiration +together with a resemblance from an uncle." + +He looked again at his watch and noticed with sickening disgust +that there were yet a good many minutes to midnight. He tore +watch and chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the table well +in the circle of bright lamplight. Haldin, reclining on his +elbow, did not stir. Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude. +"What move is he meditating over so quietly?" he thought. "He +must be prevented. I must keep on talking to him." + +He raised his voice. + +"You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know +what--to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before +you. A man with a mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who +had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his +life would think on matters on which you would think first with +or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside +prejudices?. . . Did you ever consider how a man like that would +feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think +against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to +but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench +away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations +towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go +upon at the will of violent enthusiasts? You come from your +province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt +you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day --a sort of hero--a +political saint. But I beg to be excused. I +am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you +people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On +this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you," he +cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step +nearer the bed, "that what it needs is not a lot of haunting +phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!" + +Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him off in horror. + +"I understand it all now," he exclaimed, with awestruck dismay. +"I understand--at last." + +Razumov staggered back against the table. His forehead broke out +in perspiration while a cold shudder ran down his spine. + +"What have I been saying?" he asked himself. "Have I let him slip +through my fingers after all? + +"He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and instead of a +reassuring smile only achieved an uncertain grimace. + +"What will you have?" he began in a conciliating voice which got +steady after the first trembling word or two. "What will you have? +Consider--a man of studious, retired habits--and suddenly like this. . . . +I am not practised in talking delicately. But. . . + +"He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him again. + +"What were we to do together till midnight? Sit here opposite +each other and think of your--your-shambles?" + +Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude. He bowed his head; +his hands hung between his knees. His voice was low and pained +but calm. + +"I see now how it is, Razumov--brother. You are a magnanimous +soul, but my action is abhorrent to you--alas. . ." + +Razumov stared. From fright he had set his teeth so hard that his +whole face ached. It was impossible for him to make a sound. + +"And even my person, too, is loathsome to you perhaps," Haldin +added mournfully, after a short pause, looking up for a moment, +then fixing his gaze on the floor. "For indeed, unless one. . ." + +He broke off evidently waiting for a word. Razumov remained +silent. Haldin nodded his head dejectedly twice. + +"Of course. Of course,"he murmured. . . . "Ah! weary work!" + +He remained perfectly still for a moment, then made Razumov's +leaden heart strike a ponderous blow by springing up briskly. + +"So be it," he cried sadly in a low, distinct tone. "Farewell then." + +Razumov started forward, but the sight of Haldin's raised hand +checked him before he could get away from the table. He leaned +on it heavily, listening to the faint sounds of some town clock +tolling the hour. Haldin, already at the door, tall and straight +as an arrow, with his pale face and a hand raised attentively, +might have posed for the statue of a daring youth listening +to an inner voice. Razumov mechanically glanced down at his +watch. When he looked towards the door again Haldin had +vanished. There was a faint rustling in the outer room, the +feeble click of a bolt drawn back lightly. He was gone--almost +as noiseless as a vision. + +Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted, voiceless lips. The +outer door stood open. Staggering out on the landing, he leaned +far over the banister. Gazing down into the deep black shaft +with a tiny glimmering flame at the bottom, he traced by ear the +rapid spiral descent of somebody running down the stairs on +tiptoe. It was a light, swift, pattering sound, which sank away +from him into the depths: a fleeting shadow passed over the +glimmer--a wink of the tiny flame. Then stillness. + +Razumov hung over, breathing the cold raw air tainted by the evil +smells of the unclean staircase. All quiet. + +He went back into his room slowly, shutting the doors after him. +The peaceful steady light of his reading-lamp shone on the watch. +Razumov stood looking down at the little white dial. It wanted yet +three minutes to midnight. He took the watch into his hand fumblingly. + +"Slow," he muttered, and a strange fit of nervelessness came over +him. His knees shook, the watch and chain slipped through his +fingers in an instant and fell on the floor. He was so startled +that he nearly fell himself. When at last he regained enough +confidence in his limbs to stoop for it he held it to his ear at +once. After a while he growled-- + +"Stopped," and paused for quite a long time before he muttered sourly-- + +"It's done. . . . And now to work." + +He sat down, reached haphazard for a book, opened it in middle and +began to read; but after going conscientiously over two lines he lost +his hold on the print completely and did not try to regain it. He thought-- + +"There was to a certainty a police agent of some sort watching +the house across the street." + +He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway, goggle-eyed, muffled +up in a cloak to the nose and with a General's plumed, cocked hat +on his head. This absurdity made him start in the chair convulsively. +He literally had to shake his head violently to get rid of it. +The man would be disguised perhaps as a peasant . . .a beggar. . . . +Perhaps he would be just buttoned up in a dark overcoat and carrying +a loaded stick--a shifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw onions and spirits. + +This evocation brought on positive nausea. "Why do I want to +bother about this?" thought Razumov with disgust. "Am I a gendarme? +Moreover, it is done." + +He got up in great agitation. It was not done. Not yet. Not +till half-past twelve. And the watch had stopped. This reduced +him to despair. Impossible to know the time! The andlady and +all the people across the landing were asleep. How could he go +and. . .God knows what they would imagine, or how much they +would guess. He dared not go into the streets to find out. +"I am a suspect now. There's no use shirking that fact," he said +to himself bitterly. If Haldin from some cause or another gave +them the slip and.failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the police +would be invading his lodging. And if he were not in he could +never clear himself. Never. Razumov looked wildly about as if +for some means of seizing upon time which seemed to have escaped +him altogether. He had never, as far as he could remember, heard +the striking of that town clock in his rooms before this night. +And he was not even sure now whether he had heard it really on +this night. + +He went to the window and stood there with slightly bent head +on the watch for the faint sound. 'I will stay here till I hear +something," he said to himself. He stood still, his ear turned +to the panes. An atrocious aching numbness with shooting pains +in his back and legs tortured him. He did not budge. His mind +hovered on the borders of delirium. He heard himself suddenly +saying, "I confess," as a person might do on the rack. "I am on +the rack," he thought. He felt ready to swoon. The faint deep +boom of the distant clock seemed to explode in his head--he heard +it so clearly. . . . One! + +If Haldin had not turned up the police would have been already +here ransacking the house. No sound reached him. This time it +was done. + +He dragged himself painfully to the table and dropped into the +chair. He flung the book away and took a square sheet of paper. +It was like the pile of sheets covered with his neat minute +handwriting, only blank. He took a pen brusquely and dipped it +with a vague notion of going on with the writing of his +essay--but his pen remained poised over the sheet. It hung there +for some time before it came down and formed long scrawly +letters. + +Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began to write. When +he wrote a large hand his neat writing lost its character +altogether--became unsteady, almost childish. He wrote five +lines one under the other. +History not Theory. +Patriotism not Internationalism. +Evolution not Revolution. +Direction not Destruction. +Unity not Disruption. + +He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed to the bed and +reInajned fixed there for a good many minutes, while his +right hand groped all over the table for the penknife. + +He rose at last, and walking up with measured steps stabbed the +paper with the penknife to the lath and plaster wall at the head +of the bed. This done he stepped back a pace and flourished his +hand with a glance round the room. + +After that he never looked again at the bed. He took his big +cloak down from its peg and, wrapping himself up closely, went to +lie down on the hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of his +room. A leaden sleep closed his eyelids at once. Several times +that night he woke up shivering from a dream of walking through +drifts of snow in a Russia where he was as completely alone as +any betrayed autocrat could be; an immense, wintry Russia which, +somehow, his view could embrace in all its enormous expanse as if +it were a map. But after each shuddering start his heavy eyelids +fell over his glazed eyes and he slept again. + + +III + + +Approaching this part of Mr. Razumov's story, my mind, the decent +mind of an old teacher of languages, feels more and more the +difficulty of the task. + +The task is not in truth the writing in the narrative form a +_precis_ of a strange human document, but the rendering--I +perceive it now clearly--of the moral conditions ruling over a +large portion of this earth's surface; conditions not easily to +be understood, much less discovered in the limits of a story, +till some key-word is found; a word that could stand at the back +of all the words covering the pages; a word which, if not truth +itself, may perchance hold truth enough to help the moral +discovery which should be the object of every tale. + +I turn over for the hundredth time the leaves of Mr. Razumov's record, +I lay it aside, I take up the pen--and the pen being ready for its office +of setting down black on white I hesitate. For the word that persists +in creeping under its point is no other word than "cynicism." + +For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. +In its pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, +and in the secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the +spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism. It informs the +declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her +revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of prophets to the +point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the +Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent. . . . +But I must apologize for the digression. It proceeds from the +consideration of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov +after his conservative convictions, diluted in a vague liberalism +natural to the ardour of his age, had become crystallized by the +shock of his contact with Haldin. + +Razumov woke up for the tenth time perhaps with a heavy shiver. +Seeing the light of day in his window, he resisted the +inclination to lay himself down again. He did not remember +anything, but he did not think it strange to find himself on the +sofa in his cloak and chilled to the bone. The light coming +through the window seemed strangely cheerless, containing no +promise as the light of each new day should for a young man. It +was the awakening of a man mortally ill, or of a man ninety years +old. He looked at the lamp which had burnt itself out. It stood +there, the extinguished beacon of his labours, a cold object of +brass and porcelain, amongst the scattered pages of his notes and +small piles of books--a mere litter of blackened paper--dead +matter--without significance or interest. + +He got on his feet, and divesting himself of his cloak hung +it on the peg, going through all the motions mechanically. An +incredible dullness, a ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his +perceptions as though life had withdrawn itself from all things +and even from his own thoughts. There was not a sound in the house. + +Turning away from the peg, he thought in that same lifeless +manner that it must be very early yet; but when he looked at the +watch on his table he saw both hands arrested at twelve o'clock. +"Ah! yes," he mumbled to himself, and as if beginning to get +roused a little he took a survey of his room. The paper stabbed +to the wall arrested his attention. He eyed it from the distance +without approval or perplexity; but when he heard the +servant-girl beginning to bustle about in the outer room with the +_samovar_ for his morning tea, he walked up to it and took it +down with an air of profound indifference. + +While doing this he glanced down at the bed on which he had not +slept that night. The hollow in the pillow made by the weight of +Haldin's head was very noticeable. + +Even his anger at this sign of the man's passage was dull. He +did not try to nurse it into life. He did nothing all that day; +he neglected even to brush his hair. The idea of going out never +occurred to him--and if he did not start a connected train of +thought it was not because he was unable to think. It was +because he was not interested enough. + +He yawned frequently. He drank large quantities of tea, he +walked about aimlessly, and when he sat down he did not budge for +a long time. He spent some time drumming on the window with his +finger-tips quietly. In his listless wanderings round about the +table he caught sight of his own face in the looking-glass and +that arrested him. The eyes which returned his stare were +the most unhappy eyes he had ever seen. And this was the first +thing which disturbed the mental stagnation of that day. + +He was not affected personally. He merely thought that life +without happiness is impossible. What was happiness? He yawned +and went on shuffling about and about between the walls of his +room. Looking forward was happiness--that's all--nothing more. +To look forward to the gratification of some desire, to the +gratification of some passion, love, ambition, hate--hate too +indubitably. Love and hate. And to escape the dangers of +existence, to live without fear, was also happiness. There was +nothing else. Absence of fear --looking forward. "Oh! the +miserable lot of humanity!" he exclaimed mentally; and added at +once in his thought, "I ought to be happy enough as far as that +goes." But he was not excited by that assurance. On the +contrary,he yawned again as he had been yawning all day. He was +mildly surprised to discover himself being overtaken by night. +The room grew dark swiftly though time had seemed to stand still. +How was it that he had not noticed the passing of that +day? Of course, it was the watch being stopped. . . . + +He did not light his lamp, but went over to the bed and threw +himself on it without any hesitation. Lying on his back, he put +his hands under his head and stared upward. After a moment he +thought, "I am lying here like that man. I wonder if he slept +while I was struggling with the blizzard in the streets. No, he +did not sleep. But why should I not sleep?" and he felt the +silence of the night press upon all his limbs like a weight. + +In the calm of the hard frost outside, the clear-cut strokes +of the town clock counting off midnight penetrated the quietness +of his suspended animation. + +Again he began to think. It was twenty-four hours since that man +left his room. Razumov had a distinct feeling that Haldin in +the fortress was sleeping that night. It was a certitude which +made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he +justified it to himself by physiological and psychological +reasons. The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own +confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him. No +doubt he was looking forward to the consummation of his +martyrdom. A man who resigns himself to kill need not go very +far for resignation to die. Haldin slept perhaps more soundly +than General T---, whose task--weary work too--was not done, and +over whose head hung the sword of revolutionary vengeance. + +Razumov, remembering the thick-set man with his heavy jowl +resting on the collar of his uniform, the champion of autocracy, +who had let no sign of surprise, incredulity, or joy escape him, +but whose goggle eyes could express a mortal hatred of all +rebellion--Razumov moved uneasily on the bed. + +"He suspected me," he thought. "I suppose he must suspect +everybody. He would be capable of suspecting his own wife, if +Haldin had gone to her boudoir with his confession." + +Razumov sat up in anguish. Was he to remain a political suspect +all his days? Was he to go through life as a man not wholly to +be trusted--with a bad secret police note tacked on to his +record? What sort of future could he look forward to? + +"I am now a suspect," he thought again; but the habit of +reflection and that desire of safety, of an ordered life, which +was so strong in him came to his assistance as the night wore +on. His quiet, steady, and laborious existence would vouch at +length for his loyalty. There were many permitted ways to serve +one's country. There was an activity that made for progress +without being revolutionary. The field of influence was great +and infinitely varied--once one had conquered a name. + +His thought like a circling bird reverted after fourand-twenty +hours to the silver medal, and as it were poised itself there. + +When the day broke he had not slept, not for a moment, but he got +up not very tired and quite sufficiently self-possessed for all +practical purposes. + +He went out and attended three lectures in the morning. But the +work in the library was a mere dumb show of research. He sat with +many volumes open before him trying to make notes and extracts. +His new tranquillity was like a flimsy garment, and seemed to +float at the mercy of a casual word. Betrayal! Why! the fellow +had done all that was necessary to betray himself. Precious +little had been needed to deceive him. + +"I have said no word to him that was not strictly true. +Not one word," Razumov argued with himself. + +Once engaged on this line of thought there could be no question +of doing useful work. The same ideas went on passing through his +mind, and he pronounced mentally the same words over and over +again. He shut up all the books and rammed all his papers into +his pocket with convulsive movements, raging inwardly against Haldin. + +As he was leaving the library a long bony student in a threadbare +overcoat joined him, stepping moodily by his side. Razumov +answered his mumbled greeting without looking at him at all. + +"What does he want with me? "he thought with a strange dread +of the unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should +fasten itself upon his life for good and all. And the other, +muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his +comrade had seen the news of de P---'s executioner--that was +the expression he used--having been arrested the night +before last. . . . + +"I've been ill--shut up in my rooms," Razumov mumbled +through his teeth. + +The tall student, raising his shoulders, shoved his hands deep +into his pockets. He had a hairless, square, tallowy chin which +trembled slightly as he spoke, and his nose nipped bright red by +the sharp air looked like a false nose of painted cardboard +between the sallow cheeks. His whole appearance was stamped with +the mark of cold and hunger. He stalked deliberately at +Razumov's elbow with his eyes on the ground. + +"It's an official statement," he continued in the same +cautious mutter." It may be a lie. But there was somebody +arrested between midnight and one in the morning on Tuesday. +This is certain." + +And talking rapidly under the cover of his downcast air, he told +Razumov that this was known through an inferior Government clerk +employed at the Central Secretariat. That man belonged to one of +the revolutionary circles. "The same, in fact, I am affiliated +to," remarked the student. + +They were crossing a wide quadrangle. An infinite distress +possessed Razumov, annihilated his energy, and before his eyes +everything appeared confused and as if evanescent. He dared not +leave the fellow there. "He may be affiliated to the police," +was the thought that passed through his mind. "Who could tell?" +But eyeing the miserable frost-nipped, famine-struck figure of +his companion he perceived the absurdity of his suspicion. + +"But I--you know--I don't belong to any circle. I. . ." + +He dared not say any more. Neither dared he mend his pace. The +other, raising and setting down his lamentably shod feet with +exact deliberation, protested in a low tone that it was not +necessary for everybody to belong to an organization. The most +valuable personalities remained outside. Some of the best work +was done outside the organization. Then very fast, with whispering, +feverish lips-- + +"The man arrested in the street was Haldin." + +And accepting Razumov's dismayed silence as natural enough, he +assured him that there was no mistake. That Government clerk was +on night duty at the Secretariat. Hearing a great noise of +footsteps in the hall and aware that political prisoners were +brought over sometimes at night from the fortress, he opened the +door of the room in which he was working, suddenly. Before the +gendarme on duty could push him back and slam the door in his +face, he had seen a prisoner being partly carried, partly dragged +along the hall by a lot of policemen. He was being used very +brutally. And the clerk had recognized Haldin perfectly. Less +than half an hour afterwards General T-- arrived at the +Secretariat to examine that prisoner personally. + +"Aren't you astonished?" concluded the gaunt student. + +"No," said Razumov roughly--and at once regretted his answer. + +"Everybody supposed Haldin was in the provinces --with his +people. Didn't you?" + +The student turned his big hollow eyes upon Razumov, who said +unguardedly-- + +"His people are abroad." + +He could have bitten his tongue out with vexation. +The student pronounced in a tone of profound meaning-- +"So! You alone were aware. . ." and stopped. + +"They have sworn my ruin," thought Razumov." Have You spoken of +this to anyone else?" he asked with bitter curiosity. + +The other shook his head. + +"No, only to you. Our circle thought that as Haldin had been +often heard expressing a warm appreciation of your character. . ." + +Razumov could not restrain a gesture of angry despair which the +other must have misunderstood in some way, because he ceased +speaking and turned away his black, lack-lustre eyes. + +They moved side by side in silence. Then the gaunt student began +to whisper again, with averted gaze-- + +"As we have at present no one affiliated inside the fortress so +as to make it possible to furnish him with a packet of poison, we +have considered already some sort of retaliatory action--to +follow very soon. . ." + +Razumov trudging on interrupted-- + +"Were you acquainted with Haldin? Did he know where you live?" + +"I had the happiness to hear him speak twice," his companion +answered in the feverish whisper contrasting with the gloomy +apathy of his face and bearing. "He did not know where +I live . . . . I am lodging poorly with an artisan family. . . . +I have just a corner in a room. It is not very practicable to +see me there, but if you should need me for anything I am ready. . . . + +Razumov trembled with rage and fear. He was beside himself, +but kept his voice low. + +"You are not to come near me. You are not to speak to me. Never +address a single word to me. I forbid you." + +"Very well," said the other submissively, showing no surprise +whatever at this abrupt prohibition. "You don't wish for secret +reasons. . .perfectly. . .I understand." + +He edged away at once, not looking up even; and Razumov saw his +gaunt, shabby, famine-stricken figure cross the street obliquely +with lowered head and that peculiar exact motion of the feet. + +He watched him as one would watch a vision out of a nightmare, +then he continued on his way, trying not to think. On his +landing the landlady seemed to be waiting for him. She was a +short, thick, shapeless woman with a large yellow face wrapped up +everlastingly in a black woollen shawl. When she saw him come up +the last flight of stairs she flung both her arms up excitedly, +then clasped her hands before her face. + +"Kirylo Sidorovitch--little father--what have you been doing? +And such a quiet young man, too! The police are just gone this +moment after searching your rooms." + +Razumov gazed down at her with silent, scrutinizing attention. +Her puffy yellow countenance was working with emotion. She +screwed up her eyes at him entreatingly. + +"Such a sensible young man! Anybody can see you are sensible. +And now--like this--all at once. . . . What is the good of mixing +yourself up with these Nihilists? Do give over, little father. +They are unlucky people." + +Razumov moved his shoulders slightly. + +"Or is it that some secret enemy has been calumniating you, +Kirylo Sidorovitch? The world is full of black hearts and false +denunciations nowadays. There is much fear about." + +"Have you heard that I have been denounced by some one?" +asked Razumov, without taking his eyes off her quivering face. + +But she had not heard anything. She had tried to find out by +asking the police captain while his men were turning the room +upside down. The police captain of the district had known her +for the last eleven years and was a humane person. But he said +to her on the landing, looking very black and vexed-- + +"My good woman, do not ask questions. I don't know anything +myself. The order comes from higher quarters." + +And indeed there had appeared,shortly after the arrival of the +policemen of the district, a very superior gentleman in a fur +coat and a shiny hat, who sat down in the room and looked through +all the papers himself. He came alone and went away by himself, +taking nothing with him. She had been trying to put things +straight a little since they left. + +Razumov turned away brusquely and entered his rooms. + +All his books had been shaken and thrown on the floor. His +landlady followed him, and stooping painfully began to pick them +up into her apron. His papers and notes which were kept always +neatly sorted (they all related to his studies) had been shuffled +up and heaped together into a ragged pile in the middle of the table. + +This disorder affectecI him profoundly, unreasonably. He sat +down and stared. He had a distinct sensation of his very +existence being undermined in some mysterious manner, of his +moral supports falling away from him one by one. He even +experienced a slight physical giddiness and made a movement +as if to reach for something to steady himself with. + +The old woman, rising to her feet with a low groan, shot all +the books she had collected in her apron on to the sofa and left +the room muttering and sighing. + +It was only then that he noticed that the sheet of paper which +for one night had remained stabbed to the wall above his empty +bed was lying on top of the pile. + +When he had taken it down the day before he had folded it in +four, absent-mindedly, before dropping it on the table. And now +he saw it lying uppermost, spread out, smoothed out even and +covering all the confused pile of pages, the record of his +intellectual life for the last three years. It had not been +flung there. It had been placed there--smoothed out, too! He +guessed in that an intention of profound meaning--or perhaps some +inexplicable mockery. + +He sat staring at the piece of paper till his eyes began to +smart. He did not attempt to put his papers in order, either +that evening or the next day--which he spent at home in a state +of peculiar irresolution. This irresoIution bore upon the +question whether he should continue to live--neither more nor +less. But its nature was very far removed from the hesitation of +a man contemplating suicide. The idea of laying violent hands +upon his body did not occur to Razumov. The unrelated organism +bearing that label, walking, breathing, wearing these clothes, +was of no importance to anyone, unless maybe to the landlady. +The true Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined +future--in that future menaced by the lawlessness of +autocracy--for autocracy knows no law--and the lawlessness of +revolution. The feeling that his moral personality was at the +mercy of these lawless forces was so strong that he asked himself +seriously if it were worth while to go on accomplishing the men +tal functions of that existence which seemed no longer his own. + +"What is the good of exerting my intelligence, of pursuing the +systematic development of my faculties and all my plans of work?" +he asked himself. "I want to guide my conduct by reasonable convictions, +but what security have I against something--some destructive horror-- +walking in upon me as I sit here?. . . + +Razumov looked apprehensively towards the door of the outer room +as if expecting some shape of evil to turn the handle and appear +before him silently. + +"A common thief," he said to himself, "finds more guarantees in +the law he is breaking, and even a brute like Ziemianitch has his +consolation." Razumov envied the materialism of the thief and +the passion of the incorrigible lover. The consequences of their +actions were always clear and their lives remained their own. + +But he slept as soundly that night as though he had been +consoling himself in the manner of Ziemianitch. He dropped off +suddenly, lay like a log, remembered no dream on waking. But it +was as if his soul had gone out in the night to gather the +flowers of wrathful wisdom. He got up in a mood of grim +determination and as if with a new knowledge of his own nature. +He looked mockingly on the heap of papers on his table; and left +his room to attend the lectures, muttering to himself, "We shall see." + +He was in no humour to talk to anybody or hear himself questioned +as to his absence from lectures the day before. But it was +difficult to repulse rudely a very good comrade with a smooth +pink face and fair hair, bearing the nickname amongst his +fellow-students of "Madcap Kostia." He was the idolized only +son of a very wealthy and illiterate Government contractor, and +attended the lectures only during the periodical fits of +contrition following upon tearful paternal remonstrances. +Noisily blundering like a retriever puppy, his elated voice +and great gestures filled the bare academy corridors with the +joy of thoughtless animal life, provoking indulgent smiles at +a great distance. His usual discourses treated of trotting horses, +wine-parties in expensive restaurants, and the merits of persons +of easy virtue, with a disarming artlessness of outlook. He +pounced upon Razumov about midday, somewhat less uproariously +than his habit was, and led him aside. + +"Just a moment, Kirylo Sidorovitch. A few words here in this +quiet corner." + +He felt Razumov's reluctance, and insinuated his hand under his +arm caressingly. + +"No--pray do. I don't want to talk to you about any of my silly +scrapes. What are my scrapes? Absolutely nothing. Mere +childishness. The other night I flung a fellow out of a certain +place where I was having a fairly good time. A tyrannical little +beast of a quill-driver from the Treasury department. He was +bullying the people of the house. I rebuked him. 'You are not +behaving humanely to God's creatures that are a jolly sight more +estimable than yourself,' I said. I can't bear to see any +tyranny, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Upon my word I can't. He didn't +take it in good part at all. 'Who's that impudent puppy?' +he begins to shout. I was in excellent form as it happened, +and he went through the closed window very suddenly. He flew +quite a long way into the yard. I raged like--like a--minotaur. +The women clung to me and screamed, the fiddlers got under the table. +. . .Such fun! My dad had to put his hand pretty deep into his pocket, +I can tell you." He chuckled. + +"My dad is a very useful man. Jolly good thing it is for me, too. +I do get into unholy scrapes." + +His elation fell. That was just it. What was his life? +Insignificant; no good to anyone; a mere festivity. It +would end some fine day in his getting his skull split with a +champagne bottle in a drunken brawl. At such times, too, when +men were sacrificing themselves to ideas. But he could never get +any ideas into his head. His head wasn't worth anything better +than to be split by a champagne bottle. + +Razumov, protesting that he had no time, made an attempt to get +away. The other's tone changed to confidential earnestness. + +"For God's sake, Kirylo, my dear soul, let me make some sort of +sacrifice. It would not be a sacrifice really. I have my rich +dad behind me. There's positively no getting to the bottom of +his pocket." + +And rejecting indignantly Razumov's suggestion that this was +drunken raving, he offered to lend him some money to escape +abroad with. He could always get money from his dad. He had +only to say that he had lost it at cards or something of that +sort, and at the same time promise solemnly not to miss a single +lecture for three months on end. That would fetch the old man; +and he, Kostia, was quite equal to the sacrifice. Though he +really did not see what was the good for him to attend the +lectures. It was perfectly hopeless. + +"Won't you let me be of some use?" he pleaded to the silent +Razumov, who with his eyes on the ground and utterly unable to +penetrate the real drift of the other's intention, felt a strange +reluctance to clear up the point. + +"What makes you think I want to go abroad?" he asked at last +very quietly. + +Kostia lowered his voice. + +"You had the police in your rooms yesterday. There are three or +four of us who have heard of that. Never mind how we know. It is +sufficient that we do. So we have been consulting together." + +"Ah! You got to know that so soon," muttered Razumov negligently. + +"Yes. We did. And it struck us that a man like you. . ." + +"What sort of a man do you take me to be?" Razumov interrupted him. + +"A man of ideas--and a man of action too. But you are very deep, +Kirylo. There's no getting to the bottom of your mind. Not for +fellows like me. But we all agreed that you must be preserved +for our country. Of that we have no doubt whatever--I mean all +of us who have heard Haldin speak of you on certain occasions. +A man doesn't get the police ransacking his rooms without there +being some devilry hanging over his head. . . . And so if you +think that it would be better for you to bolt at once. . ." + +Razumov tore himself away and walked down the corridor, leaving +the other motionless with his mouth open. But almost at once he +returned and stood before the amazed Kostia, who shut his mouth +slowly. Razumov looked him straight in the eyes, before saying +with marked deliberation and separating his words-- +"I thank--you--very--much." + +He went away again rapidly. Kostia, recovering from his surprise +at these manoeuvres, ran up behind him pressingly. +"No! Wait! Listen. I really mean it. It would be like giving +your compassion to a starving fellow. Do you hear, Kirylo? And +any disguise you may think of, that too I could procure from a +costumier, a Jew I know. Let a fool be made serviceable +according to his folly. Perhaps also a false beard or something +of that kind may be needed. + +Razumov turned at bay. + +"There are no false beards needed in this business, +Kostia--you good-hearted lunatic, you. What do you know of +my ideas? My ideas may be poison to you." The other began to +shake his head in energetic protest. + +"What have you got to do with ideas? Some of them would make an +end of your dad's money-bags. Leave off meddling with what you +don't understand. Go back to your trotting horses and your +girls, and then you'll be sure at least of doing no harm to +anybody, and hardly any to yourself." + +The enthusiastic youth was overcome by this disdain. + +"You're sending me back to my pig's trough, Kirylo. That settles +it. I am an unlucky beast--and I shall die like a beast too. +But mind--it's your contempt that has done for me." + +Razumov went off with long strides. That this simple and grossly +festive soul should have fallen too under the revolutionary curse +affected him as an ominous symptom of the time. He reproached +himself for feeling troubled. Personally he ought to have felt +reassured. There was an obvious advantage in this conspiracy of +mistaken judgment taking him for what he was not. But was it not +strange? + +Again he experienced that sensation of his conduct being taken +out of his hands by Haldin's revolutionary tyranny. His solitary +and laborious existence had been destroyed--the only thing he +could call his own on this earth. By what right? he asked +himself furiously. In what name? + +What infuriated him most was to feel that the "thinkers" of the +University were evidently connecting him with Haldin--as a sort +of confidant in the background apparently. A mysterious connexion! +Ha ha!. . .He had been made a personage without knowing anything +about it. How that wretch Haldin must have talked about him! +Yet it was likely that Haldin had said very little. The fellow's +casual utterances were caught up and treasured and pondered over +by all these imbeciles. And was not all secret revolutionary action +based upon folly, self-deception, and lies? + +"Impossible to think of anything else," muttered Razumov to +himself. "I'll become an idiot if this goes on. The scoundrels +and the fools are murdering my intelligence." + +He lost all hope of saving his future, which depended on the free +use of his intelligence. + +He reached the doorway of his house in a state of mental +discouragement which enabled him to receive with apparent +indifference an official-looking envelope from the dirty hand of +the dvornik. + +"A gendarme brought it," said the man. "He asked if you were +at home. I told him 'No, he's not at home.' So he left it. +'Give it into his own hands,' says he. Now you've got it--eh?" + +He went back to his sweeping, and Razumov climbed his stairs, +envelope in hand. Once in his room he did not hasten to open it. +Of course this official missive was from the superior direction +of the police. A suspect! Asuspect! + +He stared in dreary astonishment at the absurdity of his +position. He thought with a sort of dry, unemotional melancholy; +three years of good work gone, the course of forty more perhaps +jeopardized--turned from hope to terror, because events started +by human folly link themselves into a sequence which no sagacity +can foresee and no courage can break through. Fatality enters +your rooms while your landlady's back is turned; you come home +and find it in possession bearing a man's name, clothed in +flesh--wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots--lounging +against the stove. It asks you, "Is the outer door closed?"--and +you don't know enough to take it by the throat and fling it +downstairs. You don't know. You welcome the crazy fate. "Sit +down," you say. And it is all over. You cannot shake it off any +more. It will cling to you for ever. Neither halter nor bullet +can give you back the freedom of your life and the sanity of +your thought. . . . It was enough to dash one's head +against a wall. + +Razumov looked slowly all round the walls as if to select a spot +to dash his head against. Then he opened the letter. It +directed the student Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov to present +himself without delay at the General Secretariat. + +Razumov had a vision of General T---'s goggle eyes waiting for +him--the embodied power of autocracy, grotesque and terrible. He +embodied the whole power of autocracy because he was its +guardian. He was the incarnate suspicion, the incarnate anger, +the incarnate ruthlessness of a political and social regime on +its defence. He loathed rebellion by instinct. And Razumov +reflected that the man was simply unable to understand a +reasonable adherence to the doctrine of absolutism. + +"What can he want with me precisely--I wonder?" he asked himself. + +As if that mental question had evoked the familiar phantom, +Haldin stood suddenly before him in the room with an +extraordinary completeness of detail. Though the short winter +day had passed already into the sinister twilight of a land +buried in snow, Razumov saw plainly the narrow leather strap +round the Tcherkess coat. The illusion of that hateful presence +was so perfect that he half expected it to ask, "Is the outer +door closed?" He looked at it with hatred and contempt. Souls do +not take a shape of clothing. Moreover, Haldin could not be +dead yet. Razumov stepped forward menacingly; the vision +vanished--and turning short on his heel he walked out +of his room with infinite disdain. + +But after going down the first flight of stairs it occurred to +him that perhaps the superior authorities of police meant to +confront him with Haldin in the flesh. This thought struck him +like a bullet, and had he not clung with both hands to the +banister he would have rolled down to the next landing most +likely. His legs were of no use for a considerable time. . . . +But why? For what conceivable reason? To what end? + +There could be no rational answer to these questions; but Razumov +remembered the promise made by the General to Prince K---. His +action was to remain unknown. + +He got down to the bottom of the stairs, lowering himself as it +were from step to step, by the banister. Under the gate he +regained much of his firmness of thought and limb. He went out +into the street without staggering visibly. Every moment he felt +steadier mentally. And yet he was saying to himself that General +T--- was perfectly capable of shutting him up in the fortress for +an indefinite time. His temperament fitted his remorseless task, +and his omnipotence made him inaccessible to reasonable argument. + +But when Razumov arrived at the Secretariat he discovered that he +would have nothing to do with General T---. It is evident from +Mr. Razumov's diary that this dreaded personality was to remain +in the background. A civilian of superior rank received him in a +private room after a period of waiting in outer offices where a +lot of scribbling went on at many tables in a heated and stuffy +atmosphere. + +The clerk in uniform who conducted him said in the corridor-- + +"You are going before Gregor Matvieitch Mikulin." + +There was nothing formidable about the man bearing that name. +His mild, expectant glance was turned on the door already when +Razumov entered. At once, with the penholder he was holding in +his hand, he pointed to a deep sofa between two windows. He +followed Razumov with his eyes while that last crossed the room +and sat down. The mild gaze rested on him, not curious, not +inquisitive--certainly not suspicious--almost without expression. +In its passionless persistence there was something resembling +sympathy. + +Razumov, who had prepared his will and his intelligence to +encounter General T--- himself, was profoundly troubled. All the +moral bracing up against the possible excesses of power and +passion went for nothing before this sallow man, who wore a full +unclipped beard. It was fair, thin, and very fine. The light +fell in coppery gleams on the protuberances of a high, rugged +forehead. And the aspect of the broad, soft physiognomy was so +homely and rustic that the careful middle parting of the hair +seemed a pretentious affectation. + +The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some irritation on his +part. I may remark here that the diary proper consisting of the +more or less daily entries seems to have been begun on that very +evening after Mr. Razumov had returned home. + +Mr. Razumov, then, was irritated. His strung-up individuality +had gone to pieces within him very suddenly. + +"I must be very prudent with him," he warned himself in the +silence during which they sat gazing at each other. It lasted +some little time, and was characterized (for silences have their +character) by a sort of sadness imparted to it perhaps by the +mild and thoughtful manner of the bearded official. Razumov +learned later that he was the chief of a department in the +General Secretariat, with a rank in the civil service equivalent +to that of a colonel in the army. + +Razumov's mistrust became acute. The main point was, not to be +drawn into saying too much. He had been called there for some +reason. What reason? To be given to understand that he was a +suspect--and also no doubt to be pumped. As to what precisely? +There was nothing. Or perhaps Haldin had been telling lies. . . . +Every alarming uncertainty beset Razumov. He could bear the +silence no longer, and cursing himself for his weakness spoke +first, though he had promised himself not to do so on any +account. + +"I haven't lost a moment's time," he began in a hoarse, provoking +tone; and then the faculty of speech seemed to leave him and +enter the body of Councillor Mikulin, who chimed in approvingly-- + +"Very proper. Very proper. Though as a matter of fact. . . + +But the spell was broken, and Razumov interrupted him boldly, +under a sudden conviction that this was the safest attitude to +take. With a great flow of words he complained of being totally +misunderstood. Even as he talked with a perception of his own +audacity he thought that the word "misunderstood" was better than +the word "mistrusted," and he repeated it again with insistence. +Suddenly he ceased, being seized with fright before the attentive +immobility of the official. "What am I talking about?" he +thought, eyeing him with a vague gaze. Mistrusted--not +misunderstood--was the right symbol for these people. +Misunderstood was the other kind of curse. Both had been brought +on his head by that fellow Haldin. And his head ached terribly. +He passed his hand over his brow--an involuntary gesture of +suffering, which he was too careless to restrain. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad + |