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<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Notes from the Underground</div>
<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky</div>
<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Constance Garnett</div>
<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July, 1996 [eBook #600]<br />
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<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND ***</div>
<h1>Notes from the Underground</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">by Fyodor Dostoyevsky</h2>
<hr />
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table summary="" style="">
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap00"><b>NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND</b></a><br /><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#part01"><b>PART I Underground</b></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap01">I</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap02">II</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap03">III</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap04">IV</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap05">V</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap06">VI</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap07">VII</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap09">IX</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap10">X</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap11">XI</a><br /><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#part02"><b>PART II À Propos of the Wet Snow</b></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap12">I</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap13">II</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap14">III</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap15">IV</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap16">V</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap17">VI</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap18">VII</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap19">VIII</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap20">IX</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap21">X</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap00"></a>NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND[*]<br/>
A NOVEL</h2>
<p class="footnote">
* The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary.
Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not
only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the
circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. I have tried to
expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of
the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of a
generation still living. In this fragment, entitled “Underground,”
this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, tries to explain
the causes owing to which he has made his appearance and was bound to make his
appearance in our midst. In the second fragment there are added the actual
notes of this person concerning certain events in his
life.—A<small>UTHOR’S</small> N<small>OTE</small>.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="part01"></a>PART I<br/>
Underground</h2>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I</h2>
<p>
I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my
liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not
know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never
have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely
superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated
enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to
consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I
understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely
that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I
cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better
than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But
still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad,
well—let it get worse!
</p>
<p>
I have been going on like that for a long time—twenty years. Now I am
forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a
spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take
bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor
jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very
witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a
despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
</p>
<p>
When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I sat, I
used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I succeeded in
making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the most part they were all
timid people—of course, they were petitioners. But of the uppish ones
there was one officer in particular I could not endure. He simply would not be
humble, and clanked his sword in a disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him
for eighteen months over that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left
off clanking it. That happened in my youth, though.
</p>
<p>
But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the
whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the
moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was
not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply
scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth,
but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and
maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably
I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame
for months after. That was my way.
</p>
<p>
I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was lying
from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the
officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every
moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that. I
felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements. I knew that they
had been swarming in me all my life and craving some outlet from me, but I
would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not let them come out.
They tormented me till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions
and—sickened me, at last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you
fancying, gentlemen, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am
asking your forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that ...
However, I assure you I do not care if you are....
</p>
<p>
It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become
anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man,
neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner,
taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent
man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes
anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be
pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is
pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my conviction of forty years. I am
forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it
is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar,
immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will
tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their
face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend
seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for
I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me
take breath ...
</p>
<p>
You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in
that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you imagine, or as you
may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and I feel that you are
irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am—then my answer is, I am a
collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I might have something to eat
(and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant relation left me six
thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and settled
down in my corner. I used to live in this corner before, but now I have settled
down in it. My room is a wretched, horrid one in the outskirts of the town. My
servant is an old country-woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover,
there is always a nasty smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate
is bad for me, and that with my small means it is very expensive to live in
Petersburg. I know all that better than all these sage and experienced
counsellors and monitors.... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going
away from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is
absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.
</p>
<p>
But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
</p>
<p>
Answer: Of himself.
</p>
<p>
Well, so I will talk about myself.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II</h2>
<p>
I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I
could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times
tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear,
gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going
illness. For man’s everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to
have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount
which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century,
especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most
theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe. (There are
intentional and unintentional towns.) It would have been quite enough, for
instance, to have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and
men of action live. I bet you think I am writing all this from affectation, to
be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred
affectation, I am clanking a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can
pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?
</p>
<p>
Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on their
diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone. We will not dispute it; my
contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of
consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to
that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this: why does it happen
that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most capable of feeling
every refinement of all that is “sublime and beautiful,” as they
used to say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only
to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that
all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the
very time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed. The
more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was “sublime and
beautiful,” the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was
to sink in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this was, as it
were, not accidental in me, but as though it were bound to be so. It was as
though it were my most normal condition, and not in the least disease or
depravity, so that at last all desire in me to struggle against this depravity
passed. It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this
was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I
endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people,
and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even
now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret
abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some
disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a
loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly,
inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till
at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and
at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into
enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to
know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the
enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own
degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier,
that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no
escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time
and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most
likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do
nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.
</p>
<p>
And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with
the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia
that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not
only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as
the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a
scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has
come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel. But enough.... Ech, I have
talked a lot of nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this
to be explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is
why I have taken up my pen....
</p>
<p>
I, for instance, have a great deal of <i>amour propre</i>. I am as suspicious
and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I
sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the face I
should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in earnest, that I
should probably have been able to discover even in that a peculiar sort of
enjoyment—the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are
the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of
the hopelessness of one’s position. And when one is slapped in the
face—why then the consciousness of being rubbed into a pulp would
positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is, look at it which way one will, it
still turns out that I was always the most to blame in everything. And what is
most humiliating of all, to blame for no fault of my own but, so to say,
through the laws of nature. In the first place, to blame because I am cleverer
than any of the people surrounding me. (I have always considered myself
cleverer than any of the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you
believe it, have been positively ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my
life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people straight in
the face.) To blame, finally, because even if I had had magnanimity, I should
only have had more suffering from the sense of its uselessness. I should
certainly have never been able to do anything from being
magnanimous—neither to forgive, for my assailant would perhaps have
slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot forgive the laws of nature;
nor to forget, for even if it were owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting
all the same. Finally, even if I had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had
desired on the contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have
revenged myself on any one for anything because I should certainly never have
made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why should I not
have made up my mind? About that in particular I want to say a few words.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III</h2>
<p>
With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for themselves
in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed, let us suppose, by
the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is nothing else but that
feeling left in their whole being. Such a gentleman simply dashes straight for
his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down, and nothing but a wall
will stop him. (By the way: facing the wall, such gentlemen—that is, the
“direct” persons and men of action—are genuinely nonplussed.
For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who think and consequently
do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are
always very glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No,
they are nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something
tranquillising, morally soothing, final—maybe even something mysterious
... but of the wall later.)
</p>
<p>
Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his tender
mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him into being on
the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the face. He is stupid. I am
not disputing that, but perhaps the normal man should be stupid, how do you
know? Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact. And I am the more persuaded of
that suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that if you take, for
instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the man of acute
consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of
a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this
retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis
that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely thinks of himself as a
mouse and not a man. It may be an acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse,
while the other is a man, and therefore, et caetera, et caetera. And the worst
of it is, he himself, his very own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one
asks him to do so; and that is an important point. Now let us look at this
mouse in action. Let us suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and
it almost always does feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too. There
may even be a greater accumulation of spite in it than in <i>l’homme de
la nature et de la vérité</i>. The base and nasty desire to vent that spite on
its assailant rankles perhaps even more nastily in it than in <i>l’homme
de la nature et de la vérité</i>. For through his innate stupidity the latter
looks upon his revenge as justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his
acute consciousness the mouse does not believe in the justice of it. To come at
last to the deed itself, to the very act of revenge. Apart from the one
fundamental nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many
other nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question
so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of
fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the
contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly about it
as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides ache. Of
course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all that with a wave of its
paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not even itself
believe, creep ignominiously into its mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking,
underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes
absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious
details, and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious,
spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination. It will
itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it will recall it all, it will go
over and over every detail, it will invent unheard of things against itself,
pretending that those things might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it
will begin to revenge itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways,
from behind the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to
vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts
at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges
itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself. On its deathbed it
will recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the years and
...
</p>
<p>
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that
conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in
that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one’s
position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of
oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute
later—that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken
lies. It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little
limited, or even simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single
atom of it. “Possibly,” you will add on your own account with a
grin, “people will not understand it either who have never received a
slap in the face,” and in that way you will politely hint to me that I,
too, perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and so
I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But set your minds
at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the face, though it is
absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you may think about it.
Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given so few slaps in the face
during my life. But enough ... not another word on that subject of such extreme
interest to you.
</p>
<p>
I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not
understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain circumstances
these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though this, let us suppose,
does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said already, confronted with the
impossible they subside at once. The impossible means the stone wall! What
stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural
science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are
descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When
they prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to
you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion
is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such
prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for
it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.
</p>
<p>
“Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she has
nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them,
you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions. A
wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so on.”
</p>
<p>
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic,
when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes
four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it
if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be
reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
</p>
<p>
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did contain
some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice two makes
four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to understand it all,
to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be
reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you
to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical combinations
to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for
the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear
as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in
silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that
there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and
perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of
hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper’s trick, that it is simply a
mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these
uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do
not know, the worse the ache.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV</h2>
<p>
“Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next,” you
cry, with a laugh.
</p>
<p>
“Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment,” I answer. I had
toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course,
people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans,
they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The enjoyment
of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not feel enjoyment
in them he would not moan. It is a good example, gentlemen, and I will develop
it. Those moans express in the first place all the aimlessness of your pain,
which is so humiliating to your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature
on which you spit disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the
same while she does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy
to punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all
possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if someone
wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does not, they will go
on aching another three months; and that finally if you are still contumacious
and still protest, all that is left you for your own gratification is to thrash
yourself or beat your wall with your fist as hard as you can, and absolutely
nothing more. Well, these mortal insults, these jeers on the part of someone
unknown, end at last in an enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree
of voluptuousness. I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of an
educated man of the nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on the second
or third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan, not as he moaned on
the first day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just as any
coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European civilisation, a
man who is “divorced from the soil and the national elements,” as
they express it now-a-days. His moans become nasty, disgustingly malignant, and
go on for whole days and nights. And of course he knows himself that he is
doing himself no sort of good with his moans; he knows better than anyone that
he is only lacerating and harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows
that even the audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his whole
family, listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha’porth of faith in
him, and inwardly understand that he might moan differently, more simply,
without trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing himself like that
from ill-humour, from malignancy. Well, in all these recognitions and disgraces
it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure. As though he would say: “I
am worrying you, I am lacerating your hearts, I am keeping everyone in the
house awake. Well, stay awake then, you, too, feel every minute that I have
toothache. I am not a hero to you now, as I tried to seem before, but simply a
nasty person, an impostor. Well, so be it, then! I am very glad that you see
through me. It is nasty for you to hear my despicable moans: well, let it be
nasty; here I will let you have a nastier flourish in a minute....” You
do not understand even now, gentlemen? No, it seems our development and our
consciousness must go further to understand all the intricacies of this
pleasure. You laugh? Delighted. My jests, gentlemen, are of course in bad
taste, jerky, involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course that is because
I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V</h2>
<p>
Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of his own
degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself? I am not saying this
now from any mawkish kind of remorse. And, indeed, I could never endure saying,
“Forgive me, Papa, I won’t do it again,” not because I am
incapable of saying that—on the contrary, perhaps just because I have
been too capable of it, and in what a way, too. As though of design I used to
get into trouble in cases when I was not to blame in any way. That was the
nastiest part of it. At the same time I was genuinely touched and penitent, I
used to shed tears and, of course, deceived myself, though I was not acting in
the least and there was a sick feeling in my heart at the time.... For that one
could not blame even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have
continually all my life offended me more than anything. It is loathsome to
remember it all, but it was loathsome even then. Of course, a minute or so
later I would realise wrathfully that it was all a lie, a revolting lie, an
affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this emotion, these vows of reform.
You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics: answer, because it was
very dull to sit with one’s hands folded, and so one began cutting
capers. That is really it. Observe yourselves more carefully, gentlemen, then
you will understand that it is so. I invented adventures for myself and made up
a life, so as at least to live in some way. How many times it has happened to
me—well, for instance, to take offence simply on purpose, for nothing;
and one knows oneself, of course, that one is offended at nothing; that one is
putting it on, but yet one brings oneself at last to the point of being really
offended. All my life I have had an impulse to play such pranks, so that in the
end I could not control it in myself. Another time, twice, in fact, I tried
hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In the depth of
my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint stir of mockery, but
yet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I was jealous, beside myself
... and it was all from <i>ennui</i>, gentlemen, all from <i>ennui;</i> inertia
overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia,
that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this
already. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all “direct” persons and
men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain
that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate
and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more
quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible
foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is
the chief thing. To begin to act, you know, you must first have your mind
completely at ease and no trace of doubt left in it. Why, how am I, for
example, to set my mind at rest? Where are the primary causes on which I am to
build? Where are my foundations? Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself
in reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after
itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the
essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case of the
laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the end? Why, just the same.
Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you did not take it in.) I
said that a man revenges himself because he sees justice in it. Therefore he
has found a primary cause, that is, justice. And so he is at rest on all sides,
and consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and successfully, being
persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing. But I see no justice in it,
I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently if I attempt to revenge
myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course, might overcome everything,
all my doubts, and so might serve quite successfully in place of a primary
cause, precisely because it is not a cause. But what is to be done if I have
not even spite (I began with that just now, you know). In consequence again of
those accursed laws of consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical
disintegration. You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons
evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a
phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and
consequently there is only the same outlet left again—that is, to beat
the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand because
you have not found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself be carried
away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause,
repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit
with your hands folded. The day after tomorrow, at the latest, you will begin
despising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself. Result: a
soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself
an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin
nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler,
like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every
intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a
sieve?
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI</h2>
<p>
Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have
respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at
least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one
quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.
Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been
to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would
mean that there was something to say about me.
“Sluggard”—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career.
Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and
should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman
who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He
considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not
simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite
right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a
sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with
sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have
long had visions of it. That “sublime and beautiful” weighs heavily
on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have
been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping
with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything “sublime and
beautiful.” I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear
into my glass and then to drain it to all that is “sublime and
beautiful.” I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the
beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the
sublime and the beautiful. I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge. An
artist, for instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay. At once I drink to the
health of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all
that is “sublime and beautiful.” An author has written <i>As you
will:</i> at once I drink to the health of “anyone you will”
because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.”
</p>
<p>
I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone who would not
show me respect. I should live at ease, I should die with dignity, why, it is
charming, perfectly charming! And what a good round belly I should have grown,
what a treble chin I should have established, what a ruby nose I should have
coloured for myself, so that everyone would have said, looking at me:
“Here is an asset! Here is something real and solid!” And, say what
you like, it is very agreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this
negative age.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII</h2>
<p>
But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who
was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not
know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were
opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty
things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and
understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good
and nothing else, and we all know that not one man can, consciously, act
against his own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would
begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first
place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has
acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts
that bear witness that men, <i>consciously</i>, that is fully understanding
their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong
on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody
and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have
obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it
almost in the darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were
pleasanter to them than any advantage.... Advantage! What is advantage? And
will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the
advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man’s
advantage, <i>sometimes</i>, not only may, but even must, consist in his
desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous. And
if so, if there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust. What
do you think—are there such cases? You laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but
only answer me: have man’s advantages been reckoned up with perfect
certainty? Are there not some which not only have not been included but cannot
possibly be included under any classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to
the best of my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from
the averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your
advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace—and so on, and so on.
So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in opposition
to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine, too, of course, be an
obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he? But, you know, this is what
is surprising: why does it so happen that all these statisticians, sages and
lovers of humanity, when they reckon up human advantages invariably leave out
one? They don’t even take it into their reckoning in the form in which it
should be taken, and the whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no
greater matter, they would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it
to the list. But the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall
under any classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for
instance ... Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and indeed
there is no one, no one to whom he is not a friend! When he prepares for any
undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to you, elegantly and clearly,
exactly how he must act in accordance with the laws of reason and truth. What
is more, he will talk to you with excitement and passion of the true normal
interests of man; with irony he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not
understand their own interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and,
within a quarter of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply
through something inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will
go off on quite a different tack—that is, act in direct opposition to
what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws of
reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to everything
... I warn you that my friend is a compound personality and therefore it is
difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is, gentlemen, it seems there
must really exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his
greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous
advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more
important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of
which a man if necessary is ready to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in
opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity—in fact, in opposition to
all those excellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental,
most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. “Yes, but
it’s advantage all the same,” you will retort. But excuse me,
I’ll make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words.
What matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it
breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system
constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In fact, it upsets
everything. But before I mention this advantage to you, I want to compromise
myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare that all these fine systems,
all these theories for explaining to mankind their real normal interests, in
order that inevitably striving to pursue these interests they may at once
become good and noble—are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises!
Yes, logical exercises. Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of
mankind by means of the pursuit of his own advantage is to my mind almost the
same thing ... as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through
civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty and
less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his arguments.
But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is
ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of
his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example because it is the
most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in
streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were champagne. Take the whole
of the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—the Great
and also the present one. Take North America—the eternal union. Take the
farce of Schleswig-Holstein.... And what is it that civilisation softens in us?
The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety
of sensations—and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of
this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact,
this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most
civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the
Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so
conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so
often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case
civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely,
more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with
his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think
bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more
energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that
Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold
pins into her slave-girls’ breasts and derived gratification from their
screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively
barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too, because also,
comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though man has now
learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having
learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully
convinced that he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad
habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human
nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then man
will cease from <i>intentional</i> error and will, so to say, be compelled not
to want to set his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then,
you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it’s a
superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his
own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop
of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so
that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself,
by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of
nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will
become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be
tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up
to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published
certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which
everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no
more incidents or adventures in the world.
</p>
<p>
Then—this is all what you say—new economic relations will be
established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so
that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply
because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of
Crystal” will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of
course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for
instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything
will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be
extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is
boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not
matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will
be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally
stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you
could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be
in the least surprised if all of a sudden, <i>à propos</i> of nothing, in the
midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a
reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms
akimbo, say to us all: “I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick
over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these
logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet
foolish will!” That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that
he would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of man. And all
that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth
mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be,
has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and
advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own
interests, and sometimes one <i>positively ought</i> (that is my idea).
One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild
it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that
very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which
comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are
continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man
wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must
want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply
<i>independent</i> choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it
may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII</h2>
<p>
“Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality,
say what you like,” you will interpose with a chuckle. “Science has
succeeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and what is
called freedom of will is nothing else than—”
</p>
<p>
Stay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself I confess, I was rather
frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice
depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the
teaching of science ... and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it.
Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires
and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what
laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in
another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula—then, most likely,
man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who
would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a
human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man
without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an
organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances—can such a thing
happen or not?
</p>
<p>
“H’m!” you decide. “Our choice is usually mistaken from
a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in
our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a
supposed advantage. But when all that is explained and worked out on paper
(which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless to suppose
that some laws of nature man will never understand), then certainly so-called
desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should come into conflict with
reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible
retaining our reason to be <i>senseless</i> in our desires, and in that way
knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice
and reasoning can be really calculated—because there will some day be
discovered the laws of our so-called free will—so, joking apart, there
may one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we really
shall choose in accordance with it. If, for instance, some day they calculate
and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help
making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that particular way, what
<i>freedom</i> is left me, especially if I am a learned man and have taken my
degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty
years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing
left for us to do; anyway, we should have to understand that. And, in fact, we
ought unwearyingly to repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in
such and such circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to
take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really
aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even ... to the chemical
retort, there’s no help for it, we must accept the retort too, or else it
will be accepted without our consent....”
</p>
<p>
Yes, but here I come to a stop! Gentlemen, you must excuse me for being
over-philosophical; it’s the result of forty years underground! Allow me
to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing,
there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies
only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of
the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the
impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often
worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for
instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities
for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one
twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows
what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn;
this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a
whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even
if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect, gentlemen, that you are looking at me
with compassion; you tell me again that an enlightened and developed man, such,
in short, as the future man will be, cannot consciously desire anything
disadvantageous to himself, that that can be proved mathematically. I
thoroughly agree, it can—by mathematics. But I repeat for the hundredth
time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire
what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order
to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be
bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very
stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more
advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases.
And in particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it
does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason
concerning our advantage—for in any circumstances it preserves for us
what is most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our
individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious
thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with
reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept within bounds. It is
profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But very often, and even most
often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason ... and ... and ...
do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy?
Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to
suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then
who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful!
Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is
the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his
worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of
the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently
lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is
due to no other cause than moral obliquity. Put it to the test and cast your
eyes upon the history of mankind. What will you see? Is it a grand spectacle?
Grand, if you like. Take the Colossus of Rhodes, for instance, that’s
worth something. With good reason Mr. Anaevsky testifies of it that some say
that it is the work of man’s hands, while others maintain that it has
been created by nature herself. Is it many-coloured? May be it is
many-coloured, too: if one takes the dress uniforms, military and civilian, of
all peoples in all ages—that alone is worth something, and if you take
the undress uniforms you will never get to the end of it; no historian would be
equal to the job. Is it monotonous? May be it’s monotonous too:
it’s fighting and fighting; they are fighting now, they fought first and
they fought last—you will admit, that it is almost too monotonous. In
short, one may say anything about the history of the world—anything that
might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say
is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat. And,
indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are
continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of
humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and
rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply
in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in
this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have
been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one.
Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with
strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea
of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface;
give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but
sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and
even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty
trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most
fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all
this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic
dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to
prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still
are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to
control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the
calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key,
even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then
he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out
of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means
he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts,
only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man
can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other
animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is,
convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all
this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses,
so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it
all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order
to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for
the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself
every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his
skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted
to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on
something we don’t know?
</p>
<p>
You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is
touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should
of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with
the laws of nature and arithmetic.
</p>
<p>
Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to
tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four?
Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX</h2>
<p>
Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not brilliant, but
you know one can take everything as a joke. I am, perhaps, jesting against the
grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for
instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in
accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it
is possible, but also that it is <i>desirable</i> to reform man in that way?
And what leads you to the conclusion that man’s inclinations <i>need</i>
reforming? In short, how do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit
to man? And to go to the root of the matter, why are you so positively
convinced that not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the
conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous for man
and must always be a law for mankind? So far, you know, this is only your
supposition. It may be the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You
think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree
that man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously
for an object and to engage in engineering—that is, incessantly and
eternally to make new roads, <i>wherever they may lead</i>. But the reason why
he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is
<i>predestined</i> to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the
“direct” practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to
him that the road almost always does lead <i>somewhere</i>, and that the
destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and
that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising
engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is
the mother of all the vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a
fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and
chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words
myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no
disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of
attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows,
perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love
with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want
to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of <i>les animaux
domestiques</i>—such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have
quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that pattern which
endures for ever—the ant-heap.
</p>
<p>
With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant-heap they
will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and
good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like
a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows
(there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which
mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other
words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always
be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such
positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man
has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it
now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he
traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to
find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be
nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at
least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the
police-station—and there is occupation for a week. But where can man go?
Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained
such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to
have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical
creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical
certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to
me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who
stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two
makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due,
twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
</p>
<p>
And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and
the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is
for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not
man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of
suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being?
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and
that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that;
only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my
personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me
positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very
pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for
well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being
guaranteed to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of place in
vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the “Palace of Crystal”
it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good
of a “palace of crystal” if there could be any doubt about it? And
yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and
chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it
down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man,
yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction.
Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.
Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to
understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and
plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the
same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that
will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is
better than nothing.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X</h2>
<p>
You believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed—a palace
at which one will not be able to put out one’s tongue or make a long nose
on the sly. And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this edifice, that it
is of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one cannot put one’s
tongue out at it even on the sly.
</p>
<p>
You see, if it were not a palace, but a hen-house, I might creep into it to
avoid getting wet, and yet I would not call the hen-house a palace out of
gratitude to it for keeping me dry. You laugh and say that in such
circumstances a hen-house is as good as a mansion. Yes, I answer, if one had to
live simply to keep out of the rain.
</p>
<p>
But what is to be done if I have taken it into my head that that is not the
only object in life, and that if one must live one had better live in a
mansion? That is my choice, my desire. You will only eradicate it when you have
changed my preference. Well, do change it, allure me with something else, give
me another ideal. But meanwhile I will not take a hen-house for a mansion. The
palace of crystal may be an idle dream, it may be that it is inconsistent with
the laws of nature and that I have invented it only through my own stupidity,
through the old-fashioned irrational habits of my generation. But what does it
matter to me that it is inconsistent? That makes no difference since it exists
in my desires, or rather exists as long as my desires exist. Perhaps you are
laughing again? Laugh away; I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend
that I am satisfied when I am hungry. I know, anyway, that I will not be put
off with a compromise, with a recurring zero, simply because it is consistent
with the laws of nature and actually exists. I will not accept as the crown of
my desires a block of buildings with tenements for the poor on a lease of a
thousand years, and perhaps with a sign-board of a dentist hanging out. Destroy
my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow
you. You will say, perhaps, that it is not worth your trouble; but in that case
I can give you the same answer. We are discussing things seriously; but if you
won’t deign to give me your attention, I will drop your acquaintance. I
can retreat into my underground hole.
</p>
<p>
But while I am alive and have desires I would rather my hand were withered off
than bring one brick to such a building! Don’t remind me that I have just
rejected the palace of crystal for the sole reason that one cannot put out
one’s tongue at it. I did not say because I am so fond of putting my
tongue out. Perhaps the thing I resented was, that of all your edifices there
has not been one at which one could not put out one’s tongue. On the
contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off out of gratitude if things could be
so arranged that I should lose all desire to put it out. It is not my fault
that things cannot be so arranged, and that one must be satisfied with model
flats. Then why am I made with such desires? Can I have been constructed simply
in order to come to the conclusion that all my construction is a cheat? Can
this be my whole purpose? I do not believe it.
</p>
<p>
But do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk ought to be kept
on a curb. Though we may sit forty years underground without speaking, when we
do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk....
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI</h2>
<p>
The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing!
Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground! Though I have said
that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my bile, yet I should not care
to be in his place such as he is now (though I shall not cease envying him).
No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous. There, at any rate,
one can ... Oh, but even now I am lying! I am lying because I know myself that
it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different,
for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground!
</p>
<p>
I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself
believed in anything of what I have just written. I swear to you, gentlemen,
there is not one thing, not one word of what I have written that I really
believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time I feel and
suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.
</p>
<p>
“Then why have you written all this?” you will say to me. “I
ought to put you underground for forty years without anything to do and then
come to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached! How can a
man be left with nothing to do for forty years?”
</p>
<p>
“Isn’t that shameful, isn’t that humiliating?” you will
say, perhaps, wagging your heads contemptuously. “You thirst for life and
try to settle the problems of life by a logical tangle. And how persistent, how
insolent are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you are in! You
talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent things and are in
continual alarm and apologising for them. You declare that you are afraid of
nothing and at the same time try to ingratiate yourself in our good opinion.
You declare that you are gnashing your teeth and at the same time you try to be
witty so as to amuse us. You know that your witticisms are not witty, but you
are evidently well satisfied with their literary value. You may, perhaps, have
really suffered, but you have no respect for your own suffering. You may have
sincerity, but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest vanity you expose your
sincerity to publicity and ignominy. You doubtlessly mean to say something, but
hide your last word through fear, because you have not the resolution to utter
it, and only have a cowardly impudence. You boast of consciousness, but you are
not sure of your ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is darkened
and corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without a pure
heart. And how intrusive you are, how you insist and grimace! Lies, lies,
lies!”
</p>
<p>
Of course I have myself made up all the things you say. That, too, is from
underground. I have been for forty years listening to you through a crack under
the floor. I have invented them myself, there was nothing else I could invent.
It is no wonder that I have learned it by heart and it has taken a literary
form....
</p>
<p>
But can you really be so credulous as to think that I will print all this and
give it to you to read too? And another problem: why do I call you
“gentlemen,” why do I address you as though you really were my
readers? Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor given to
other people to read. Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough for that, and I
don’t see why I should be. But you see a fancy has occurred to me and I
want to realise it at all costs. Let me explain.
</p>
<p>
Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to
his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to
his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other
things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has
a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he is, the
greater the number of such things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately
determined to remember some of my early adventures. Till now I have always
avoided them, even with a certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling
them, but have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the
experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take
fright at the whole truth. I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that
a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie
about himself. He considers that Rousseau certainly told lies about himself in
his confessions, and even intentionally lied, out of vanity. I am convinced
that Heine is right; I quite understand how sometimes one may, out of sheer
vanity, attribute regular crimes to oneself, and indeed I can very well
conceive that kind of vanity. But Heine judged of people who made their
confessions to the public. I write only for myself, and I wish to declare once
and for all that if I write as though I were addressing readers, that is simply
because it is easier for me to write in that form. It is a form, an empty
form—I shall never have readers. I have made this plain already ...
</p>
<p>
I don’t wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of my
notes. I shall not attempt any system or method. I will jot things down as I
remember them.
</p>
<p>
But here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you really
don’t reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with
yourself—and on paper too—that is, that you won’t attempt any
system or method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on, and
so on? Why are you explaining? Why do you apologise?
</p>
<p>
Well, there it is, I answer.
</p>
<p>
There is a whole psychology in all this, though. Perhaps it is simply that I am
a coward. And perhaps that I purposely imagine an audience before me in order
that I may be more dignified while I write. There are perhaps thousands of
reasons. Again, what is my object precisely in writing? If it is not for the
benefit of the public why should I not simply recall these incidents in my own
mind without putting them on paper?
</p>
<p>
Quite so; but yet it is more imposing on paper. There is something more
impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and improve my
style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from writing. Today, for
instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory of a distant past. It came
back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and has remained haunting me like an
annoying tune that one cannot get rid of. And yet I must get rid of it somehow.
I have hundreds of such reminiscences; but at times some one stands out from
the hundred and oppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down
I should get rid of it. Why not try?
</p>
<p>
Besides, I am bored, and I never have anything to do. Writing will be a sort of
work. They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest. Well, here is a chance
for me, anyway.
</p>
<p>
Snow is falling today, yellow and dingy. It fell yesterday, too, and a few days
ago. I fancy it is the wet snow that has reminded me of that incident which I
cannot shake off now. And so let it be a story <i>à propos</i> of the falling
snow.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="part02"></a>PART II<br/>
À Propos of the Wet Snow</h2>
<p class="poem">
When from dark error’s subjugation<br/>
My words of passionate exhortation<br/>
Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;<br/>
And writhing prone in thine affliction<br/>
Thou didst recall with malediction<br/>
The vice that had encompassed thee:<br/>
And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting<br/>
By recollection’s torturing flame,<br/>
Thou didst reveal the hideous setting<br/>
Of thy life’s current ere I came:<br/>
When suddenly I saw thee sicken,<br/>
And weeping, hide thine anguished face,<br/>
Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,<br/>
At memories of foul disgrace.<br/>
N<small>EKRASSOV</small> (<i>translated by Juliet
Soskice</i>).
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap12"></a>I</h2>
<p>
At that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy,
ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with no one
and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more in my hole. At
work in the office I never looked at anyone, and was perfectly well aware that
my companions looked upon me, not only as a queer fellow, but even looked upon
me—I always fancied this—with a sort of loathing. I sometimes
wondered why it was that nobody except me fancied that he was looked upon with
aversion? One of the clerks had a most repulsive, pock-marked face, which
looked positively villainous. I believe I should not have dared to look at
anyone with such an unsightly countenance. Another had such a very dirty old
uniform that there was an unpleasant odour in his proximity. Yet not one of
these gentlemen showed the slightest self-consciousness—either about
their clothes or their countenance or their character in any way. Neither of
them ever imagined that they were looked at with repulsion; if they had
imagined it they would not have minded—so long as their superiors did not
look at them in that way. It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded
vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with
furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the
same feeling to everyone. I hated my face, for instance: I thought it
disgusting, and even suspected that there was something base in my expression,
and so every day when I turned up at the office I tried to behave as
independently as possible, and to assume a lofty expression, so that I might
not be suspected of being abject. “My face may be ugly,” I thought,
“but let it be lofty, expressive, and, above all, <i>extremely</i>
intelligent.” But I was positively and painfully certain that it was
impossible for my countenance ever to express those qualities. And what was
worst of all, I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite
satisfied if I could have looked intelligent. In fact, I would even have put up
with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have been thought
strikingly intelligent.
</p>
<p>
Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them all, yet
at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact, it happened at
times that I thought more highly of them than of myself. It somehow happened
quite suddenly that I alternated between despising them and thinking them
superior to myself. A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting
a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating
himself at certain moments. But whether I despised them or thought them
superior I dropped my eyes almost every time I met anyone. I even made
experiments whether I could face so and so’s looking at me, and I was
always the first to drop my eyes. This worried me to distraction. I had a
sickly dread, too, of being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the
conventional in everything external. I loved to fall into the common rut, and
had a whole-hearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in myself. But how could
I live up to it? I was morbidly sensitive as a man of our age should be. They
were all stupid, and as like one another as so many sheep. Perhaps I was the
only one in the office who fancied that I was a coward and a slave, and I
fancied it just because I was more highly developed. But it was not only that I
fancied it, it really was so. I was a coward and a slave. I say this without
the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a
slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made
and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to
some casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to
be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature for all decent people all over
the earth. If anyone of them happens to be valiant about something, he need not
be comforted nor carried away by that; he would show the white feather just the
same before something else. That is how it invariably and inevitably ends. Only
donkeys and mules are valiant, and they only till they are pushed up to the
wall. It is not worth while to pay attention to them for they really are of no
consequence.
</p>
<p>
Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like
me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are
<i>everyone</i>,” I thought—and pondered.
</p>
<p>
From that it is evident that I was still a youngster.
</p>
<p>
The very opposite sometimes happened. It was loathsome sometimes to go to the
office; things reached such a point that I often came home ill. But all at
once, <i>à propos</i> of nothing, there would come a phase of scepticism and
indifference (everything happened in phases to me), and I would laugh myself at
my intolerance and fastidiousness, I would reproach myself with being
<i>romantic</i>. At one time I was unwilling to speak to anyone, while at other
times I would not only talk, but go to the length of contemplating making
friends with them. All my fastidiousness would suddenly, for no rhyme or
reason, vanish. Who knows, perhaps I never had really had it, and it had simply
been affected, and got out of books. I have not decided that question even now.
Once I quite made friends with them, visited their homes, played preference,
drank vodka, talked of promotions.... But here let me make a digression.
</p>
<p>
We Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish transcendental
“romantics”—German, and still more French—on whom
nothing produces any effect; if there were an earthquake, if all France
perished at the barricades, they would still be the same, they would not even
have the decency to affect a change, but would still go on singing their
transcendental songs to the hour of their death, because they are fools. We, in
Russia, have no fools; that is well known. That is what distinguishes us from
foreign lands. Consequently these transcendental natures are not found amongst
us in their pure form. The idea that they are is due to our
“realistic” journalists and critics of that day, always on the look
out for Kostanzhoglos and Uncle Pyotr Ivanitchs and foolishly accepting them as
our ideal; they have slandered our romantics, taking them for the same
transcendental sort as in Germany or France. On the contrary, the
characteristics of our “romantics” are absolutely and directly
opposed to the transcendental European type, and no European standard can be
applied to them. (Allow me to make use of this word
“romantic”—an old-fashioned and much respected word which has
done good service and is familiar to all.) The characteristics of our romantic
are to understand everything, <i>to see everything and to see it often
incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it;</i> to refuse
to accept anyone or anything, but at the same time not to despise anything; to
give way, to yield, from policy; never to lose sight of a useful practical
object (such as rent-free quarters at the government expense, pensions,
decorations), to keep their eye on that object through all the enthusiasms and
volumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve “the sublime
and the beautiful” inviolate within them to the hour of their death, and
to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel wrapped in
cotton wool if only for the benefit of “the sublime and the
beautiful.” Our “romantic” is a man of great breadth and the
greatest rogue of all our rogues, I assure you.... I can assure you from
experience, indeed. Of course, that is, if he is intelligent. But what am I
saying! The romantic is always intelligent, and I only meant to observe that
although we have had foolish romantics they don’t count, and they were
only so because in the flower of their youth they degenerated into Germans, and
to preserve their precious jewel more comfortably, settled somewhere out
there—by preference in Weimar or the Black Forest.
</p>
<p>
I, for instance, genuinely despised my official work and did not openly abuse
it simply because I was in it myself and got a salary for it. Anyway, take
note, I did not openly abuse it. Our romantic would rather go out of his
mind—a thing, however, which very rarely happens—than take to open
abuse, unless he had some other career in view; and he is never kicked out. At
most, they would take him to the lunatic asylum as “the King of
Spain” if he should go very mad. But it is only the thin, fair people who
go out of their minds in Russia. Innumerable “romantics” attain
later in life to considerable rank in the service. Their many-sidedness is
remarkable! And what a faculty they have for the most contradictory sensations!
I was comforted by this thought even in those days, and I am of the same
opinion now. That is why there are so many “broad natures” among us
who never lose their ideal even in the depths of degradation; and though they
never stir a finger for their ideal, though they are arrant thieves and knaves,
yet they tearfully cherish their first ideal and are extraordinarily honest at
heart. Yes, it is only among us that the most incorrigible rogue can be
absolutely and loftily honest at heart without in the least ceasing to be a
rogue. I repeat, our romantics, frequently, become such accomplished rascals (I
use the term “rascals” affectionately), suddenly display such a
sense of reality and practical knowledge that their bewildered superiors and
the public generally can only ejaculate in amazement.
</p>
<p>
Their many-sidedness is really amazing, and goodness knows what it may develop
into later on, and what the future has in store for us. It is not a poor
material! I do not say this from any foolish or boastful patriotism. But I feel
sure that you are again imagining that I am joking. Or perhaps it’s just
the contrary and you are convinced that I really think so. Anyway, gentlemen, I
shall welcome both views as an honour and a special favour. And do forgive my
digression.
</p>
<p>
I did not, of course, maintain friendly relations with my comrades and soon was
at loggerheads with them, and in my youth and inexperience I even gave up
bowing to them, as though I had cut off all relations. That, however, only
happened to me once. As a rule, I was always alone.
</p>
<p>
In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle
all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions.
And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of course, was a great
help—exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But at times it bored me
fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at
once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched
passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had
hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except
reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect
and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an
hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice. I
have not said all this to justify myself.... But, no! I am lying. I did want to
justify myself. I make that little observation for my own benefit, gentlemen. I
don’t want to lie. I vowed to myself I would not.
</p>
<p>
And so, furtively, timidly, in solitude, at night, I indulged in filthy vice,
with a feeling of shame which never deserted me, even at the most loathsome
moments, and which at such moments nearly made me curse. Already even then I
had my underground world in my soul. I was fearfully afraid of being seen, of
being met, of being recognised. I visited various obscure haunts.
</p>
<p>
One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some
gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the
window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in
such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the
window—and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into
the billiard-room. “Perhaps,” I thought, “I’ll have a
fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.”
</p>
<p>
I was not drunk—but what is one to do—depression will drive a man
to such a pitch of hysteria? But nothing happened. It seemed that I was not
even equal to being thrown out of the window and I went away without having my
fight.
</p>
<p>
An officer put me in my place from the first moment.
</p>
<p>
I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way,
and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a
word—without a warning or explanation—moved me from where I was
standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could
have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without
noticing me.
</p>
<p>
Devil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel—a more
decent, a more <i>literary</i> one, so to speak. I had been treated like a fly.
This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow. But the
quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I certainly would have been
thrown out of the window. But I changed my mind and preferred to beat a
resentful retreat.
</p>
<p>
I went out of the tavern straight home, confused and troubled, and the next
night I went out again with the same lewd intentions, still more furtively,
abjectly and miserably than before, as it were, with tears in my eyes—but
still I did go out again. Don’t imagine, though, it was cowardice made me
slink away from the officer; I never have been a coward at heart, though I have
always been a coward in action. Don’t be in a hurry to laugh—I
assure you I can explain it all.
</p>
<p>
Oh, if only that officer had been one of the sort who would consent to fight a
duel! But no, he was one of those gentlemen (alas, long extinct!) who preferred
fighting with cues or, like Gogol’s Lieutenant Pirogov, appealing to the
police. They did not fight duels and would have thought a duel with a civilian
like me an utterly unseemly procedure in any case—and they looked upon
the duel altogether as something impossible, something free-thinking and
French. But they were quite ready to bully, especially when they were over six
foot.
</p>
<p>
I did not slink away through cowardice, but through an unbounded vanity. I was
afraid not of his six foot, not of getting a sound thrashing and being thrown
out of the window; I should have had physical courage enough, I assure you; but
I had not the moral courage. What I was afraid of was that everyone present,
from the insolent marker down to the lowest little stinking, pimply clerk in a
greasy collar, would jeer at me and fail to understand when I began to protest
and to address them in literary language. For of the point of honour—not
of honour, but of the point of honour (<i>point d’honneur</i>)—one
cannot speak among us except in literary language. You can’t allude to
the “point of honour” in ordinary language. I was fully convinced
(the sense of reality, in spite of all my romanticism!) that they would all
simply split their sides with laughter, and that the officer would not simply
beat me, that is, without insulting me, but would certainly prod me in the back
with his knee, kick me round the billiard-table, and only then perhaps have
pity and drop me out of the window.
</p>
<p>
Of course, this trivial incident could not with me end in that. I often met
that officer afterwards in the street and noticed him very carefully. I am not
quite sure whether he recognised me, I imagine not; I judge from certain signs.
But I—I stared at him with spite and hatred and so it went on ... for
several years! My resentment grew even deeper with years. At first I began
making stealthy inquiries about this officer. It was difficult for me to do so,
for I knew no one. But one day I heard someone shout his surname in the street
as I was following him at a distance, as though I were tied to him—and so
I learnt his surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten
kopecks learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he
lived alone or with others, and so on—in fact, everything one could learn
from a porter. One morning, though I had never tried my hand with the pen, it
suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on this officer in the form of a
novel which would unmask his villainy. I wrote the novel with relish. I did
unmask his villainy, I even exaggerated it; at first I so altered his surname
that it could easily be recognised, but on second thoughts I changed it, and
sent the story to the <i>Otetchestvenniya Zapiski</i>. But at that time such
attacks were not the fashion and my story was not printed. That was a great
vexation to me.
</p>
<p>
Sometimes I was positively choked with resentment. At last I determined to
challenge my enemy to a duel. I composed a splendid, charming letter to him,
imploring him to apologise to me, and hinting rather plainly at a duel in case
of refusal. The letter was so composed that if the officer had had the least
understanding of the sublime and the beautiful he would certainly have flung
himself on my neck and have offered me his friendship. And how fine that would
have been! How we should have got on together! “He could have shielded me
with his higher rank, while I could have improved his mind with my culture,
and, well ... my ideas, and all sorts of things might have happened.”
Only fancy, this was two years after his insult to me, and my challenge would
have been a ridiculous anachronism, in spite of all the ingenuity of my letter
in disguising and explaining away the anachronism. But, thank God (to this day
I thank the Almighty with tears in my eyes) I did not send the letter to him.
Cold shivers run down my back when I think of what might have happened if I had
sent it.
</p>
<p>
And all at once I revenged myself in the simplest way, by a stroke of genius! A
brilliant thought suddenly dawned upon me. Sometimes on holidays I used to
stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four o’clock in the
afternoon. Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a series of innumerable
miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no doubt that was just what I
wanted. I used to wriggle along in a most unseemly fashion, like an eel,
continually moving aside to make way for generals, for officers of the guards
and the hussars, or for ladies. At such minutes there used to be a convulsive
twinge at my heart, and I used to feel hot all down my back at the mere thought
of the wretchedness of my attire, of the wretchedness and abjectness of my
little scurrying figure. This was a regular martyrdom, a continual, intolerable
humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant and direct
sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty,
disgusting fly—more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in
feeling than any of them, of course—but a fly that was continually making
way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone. Why I inflicted this
torture upon myself, why I went to the Nevsky, I don’t know. I felt
simply drawn there at every possible opportunity.
</p>
<p>
Already then I began to experience a rush of the enjoyment of which I spoke in
the first chapter. After my affair with the officer I felt even more drawn
there than before: it was on the Nevsky that I met him most frequently, there I
could admire him. He, too, went there chiefly on holidays, He, too, turned out
of his path for generals and persons of high rank, and he too, wriggled between
them like an eel; but people, like me, or even better dressed than me, he
simply walked over; he made straight for them as though there was nothing but
empty space before him, and never, under any circumstances, turned aside. I
gloated over my resentment watching him and ... always resentfully made way for
him. It exasperated me that even in the street I could not be on an even
footing with him.
</p>
<p>
“Why must you invariably be the first to move aside?” I kept asking
myself in hysterical rage, waking up sometimes at three o’clock in the
morning. “Why is it you and not he? There’s no regulation about it;
there’s no written law. Let the making way be equal as it usually is when
refined people meet; he moves half-way and you move half-way; you pass with
mutual respect.”
</p>
<p>
But that never happened, and I always moved aside, while he did not even notice
my making way for him. And lo and behold a bright idea dawned upon me!
“What,” I thought, “if I meet him and don’t move on one
side? What if I don’t move aside on purpose, even if I knock up against
him? How would that be?” This audacious idea took such a hold on me that
it gave me no peace. I was dreaming of it continually, horribly, and I
purposely went more frequently to the Nevsky in order to picture more vividly
how I should do it when I did do it. I was delighted. This intention seemed to
me more and more practical and possible.
</p>
<p>
“Of course I shall not really push him,” I thought, already more
good-natured in my joy. “I will simply not turn aside, will run up
against him, not very violently, but just shouldering each other—just as
much as decency permits. I will push against him just as much as he pushes
against me.” At last I made up my mind completely. But my preparations
took a great deal of time. To begin with, when I carried out my plan I should
need to be looking rather more decent, and so I had to think of my get-up.
“In case of emergency, if, for instance, there were any sort of public
scandal (and the public there is of the most <i>recherché:</i> the Countess
walks there; Prince D. walks there; all the literary world is there), I must be
well dressed; that inspires respect and of itself puts us on an equal footing
in the eyes of the society.”
</p>
<p>
With this object I asked for some of my salary in advance, and bought at
Tchurkin’s a pair of black gloves and a decent hat. Black gloves seemed
to me both more dignified and <i>bon ton</i> than the lemon-coloured ones which
I had contemplated at first. “The colour is too gaudy, it looks as though
one were trying to be conspicuous,” and I did not take the lemon-coloured
ones. I had got ready long beforehand a good shirt, with white bone studs; my
overcoat was the only thing that held me back. The coat in itself was a very
good one, it kept me warm; but it was wadded and it had a raccoon collar which
was the height of vulgarity. I had to change the collar at any sacrifice, and
to have a beaver one like an officer’s. For this purpose I began visiting
the Gostiny Dvor and after several attempts I pitched upon a piece of cheap
German beaver. Though these German beavers soon grow shabby and look wretched,
yet at first they look exceedingly well, and I only needed it for the occasion.
I asked the price; even so, it was too expensive. After thinking it over
thoroughly I decided to sell my raccoon collar. The rest of the money—a
considerable sum for me, I decided to borrow from Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin,
my immediate superior, an unassuming person, though grave and judicious. He
never lent money to anyone, but I had, on entering the service, been specially
recommended to him by an important personage who had got me my berth. I was
horribly worried. To borrow from Anton Antonitch seemed to me monstrous and
shameful. I did not sleep for two or three nights. Indeed, I did not sleep well
at that time, I was in a fever; I had a vague sinking at my heart or else a
sudden throbbing, throbbing, throbbing! Anton Antonitch was surprised at first,
then he frowned, then he reflected, and did after all lend me the money,
receiving from me a written authorisation to take from my salary a fortnight
later the sum that he had lent me.
</p>
<p>
In this way everything was at last ready. The handsome beaver replaced the
mean-looking raccoon, and I began by degrees to get to work. It would never
have done to act offhand, at random; the plan had to be carried out skilfully,
by degrees. But I must confess that after many efforts I began to despair: we
simply could not run into each other. I made every preparation, I was quite
determined—it seemed as though we should run into one another
directly—and before I knew what I was doing I had stepped aside for him
again and he had passed without noticing me. I even prayed as I approached him
that God would grant me determination. One time I had made up my mind
thoroughly, but it ended in my stumbling and falling at his feet because at the
very last instant when I was six inches from him my courage failed me. He very
calmly stepped over me, while I flew on one side like a ball. That night I was
ill again, feverish and delirious.
</p>
<p>
And suddenly it ended most happily. The night before I had made up my mind not
to carry out my fatal plan and to abandon it all, and with that object I went
to the Nevsky for the last time, just to see how I would abandon it all.
Suddenly, three paces from my enemy, I unexpectedly made up my mind—I
closed my eyes, and we ran full tilt, shoulder to shoulder, against one
another! I did not budge an inch and passed him on a perfectly equal footing!
He did not even look round and pretended not to notice it; but he was only
pretending, I am convinced of that. I am convinced of that to this day! Of
course, I got the worst of it—he was stronger, but that was not the
point. The point was that I had attained my object, I had kept up my dignity, I
had not yielded a step, and had put myself publicly on an equal social footing
with him. I returned home feeling that I was fully avenged for everything. I
was delighted. I was triumphant and sang Italian arias. Of course, I will not
describe to you what happened to me three days later; if you have read my first
chapter you can guess for yourself. The officer was afterwards transferred; I
have not seen him now for fourteen years. What is the dear fellow doing now?
Whom is he walking over?
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap13"></a>II</h2>
<p>
But the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very sick
afterwards. It was followed by remorse—I tried to drive it away; I felt
too sick. By degrees, however, I grew used to that too. I grew used to
everything, or rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring it. But I had a
means of escape that reconciled everything—that was to find refuge in
“the sublime and the beautiful,” in dreams, of course. I was a
terrible dreamer, I would dream for three months on end, tucked away in my
corner, and you may believe me that at those moments I had no resemblance to
the gentleman who, in the perturbation of his chicken heart, put a collar of
German beaver on his great-coat. I suddenly became a hero. I would not have
admitted my six-foot lieutenant even if he had called on me. I could not even
picture him before me then. What were my dreams and how I could satisfy myself
with them—it is hard to say now, but at the time I was satisfied with
them. Though, indeed, even now, I am to some extent satisfied with them. Dreams
were particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of dissipation; they came with
remorse and with tears, with curses and transports. There were moments of such
positive intoxication, of such happiness, that there was not the faintest trace
of irony within me, on my honour. I had faith, hope, love. I believed blindly
at such times that by some miracle, by some external circumstance, all this
would suddenly open out, expand; that suddenly a vista of suitable
activity—beneficent, good, and, above all, <i>ready made</i> (what sort
of activity I had no idea, but the great thing was that it should be all ready
for me)—would rise up before me—and I should come out into the
light of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel. Anything but
the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I
quite contentedly occupied the lowest in reality. Either to be a hero or to
grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I
was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a
hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful
to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he
might defile himself. It is worth noting that these attacks of the
“sublime and the beautiful” visited me even during the period of
dissipation and just at the times when I was touching the bottom. They came in
separate spurts, as though reminding me of themselves, but did not banish the
dissipation by their appearance. On the contrary, they seemed to add a zest to
it by contrast, and were only sufficiently present to serve as an appetising
sauce. That sauce was made up of contradictions and sufferings, of agonising
inward analysis, and all these pangs and pin-pricks gave a certain piquancy,
even a significance to my dissipation—in fact, completely answered the
purpose of an appetising sauce. There was a certain depth of meaning in it. And
I could hardly have resigned myself to the simple, vulgar, direct debauchery of
a clerk and have endured all the filthiness of it. What could have allured me
about it then and have drawn me at night into the street? No, I had a lofty way
of getting out of it all.
</p>
<p>
And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times in
those dreams of mine! in those “flights into the sublime and the
beautiful”; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied to
anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that one did not
feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality; that would have been
superfluous. Everything, however, passed satisfactorily by a lazy and
fascinating transition into the sphere of art, that is, into the beautiful
forms of life, lying ready, largely stolen from the poets and novelists and
adapted to all sorts of needs and uses. I, for instance, was triumphant over
everyone; everyone, of course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced
spontaneously to recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet
and a grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and
immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before
all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not merely shameful,
but had in them much that was “sublime and beautiful” something in
the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be
if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and
fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. Then the band would
play a march, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from
Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa
Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose
transferred to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the
bushes, and so on, and so on—as though you did not know all about it? You
will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public after
all the tears and transports which I have myself confessed. But why is it
contemptible? Can you imagine that I am ashamed of it all, and that it was
stupider than anything in your life, gentlemen? And I can assure you that some
of these fancies were by no means badly composed.... It did not all happen on
the shores of Lake Como. And yet you are right—it really is vulgar and
contemptible. And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to
justify myself to you. And even more contemptible than that is my making this
remark now. But that’s enough, or there will be no end to it; each step
will be more contemptible than the last....
</p>
<p>
I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without
feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society
meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin. He was
the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I wonder at the fact
myself now. But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when
my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to
embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least,
one human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch, however,
on Tuesday—his at-home day; so I had always to time my passionate desire
to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday.
</p>
<p>
This Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five Corners, in
four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a particularly frugal
and sallow appearance. He had two daughters and their aunt, who used to pour
out the tea. Of the daughters one was thirteen and another fourteen, they both
had snub noses, and I was awfully shy of them because they were always
whispering and giggling together. The master of the house usually sat in his
study on a leather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman,
usually a colleague from our office or some other department. I never saw more
than two or three visitors there, always the same. They talked about the excise
duty; about business in the senate, about salaries, about promotions, about His
Excellency, and the best means of pleasing him, and so on. I had the patience
to sit like a fool beside these people for four hours at a stretch, listening
to them without knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word. I
became stupefied, several times I felt myself perspiring, I was overcome by a
sort of paralysis; but this was pleasant and good for me. On returning home I
deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind.
</p>
<p>
I had however one other acquaintance of a sort, Simonov, who was an old
schoolfellow. I had a number of schoolfellows, indeed, in Petersburg, but I did
not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them in the street. I
believe I had transferred into the department I was in simply to avoid their
company and to cut off all connection with my hateful childhood. Curses on that
school and all those terrible years of penal servitude! In short, I parted from
my schoolfellows as soon as I got out into the world. There were two or three
left to whom I nodded in the street. One of them was Simonov, who had in no way
been distinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I
discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty I
don’t even suppose that he was particularly stupid. I had at one time
spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not lasted long and
had somehow been suddenly clouded over. He was evidently uncomfortable at these
reminiscences, and was, I fancy, always afraid that I might take up the same
tone again. I suspected that he had an aversion for me, but still I went on
going to see him, not being quite certain of it.
</p>
<p>
And so on one occasion, unable to endure my solitude and knowing that as it was
Thursday Anton Antonitch’s door would be closed, I thought of Simonov.
Climbing up to his fourth storey I was thinking that the man disliked me and
that it was a mistake to go and see him. But as it always happened that such
reflections impelled me, as though purposely, to put myself into a false
position, I went in. It was almost a year since I had last seen Simonov.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap14"></a>III</h2>
<p>
I found two of my old schoolfellows with him. They seemed to be discussing an
important matter. All of them took scarcely any notice of my entrance, which
was strange, for I had not met them for years. Evidently they looked upon me as
something on the level of a common fly. I had not been treated like that even
at school, though they all hated me. I knew, of course, that they must despise
me now for my lack of success in the service, and for my having let myself sink
so low, going about badly dressed and so on—which seemed to them a sign
of my incapacity and insignificance. But I had not expected such contempt.
Simonov was positively surprised at my turning up. Even in old days he had
always seemed surprised at my coming. All this disconcerted me: I sat down,
feeling rather miserable, and began listening to what they were saying.
</p>
<p>
They were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell dinner
which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of theirs called
Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was going away to a distant province. This
Zverkov had been all the time at school with me too. I had begun to hate him
particularly in the upper forms. In the lower forms he had simply been a
pretty, playful boy whom everybody liked. I had hated him, however, even in the
lower forms, just because he was a pretty and playful boy. He was always bad at
his lessons and got worse and worse as he went on; however, he left with a good
certificate, as he had powerful interests. During his last year at school he
came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all of us were poor
he took up a swaggering tone among us. He was vulgar in the extreme, but at the
same time he was a good-natured fellow, even in his swaggering. In spite of
superficial, fantastic and sham notions of honour and dignity, all but very few
of us positively grovelled before Zverkov, and the more so the more he
swaggered. And it was not from any interested motive that they grovelled, but
simply because he had been favoured by the gifts of nature. Moreover, it was,
as it were, an accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard
to tact and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I
hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his admiration of his own
witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid, though he was bold in his
language; I hated his handsome, but stupid face (for which I would, however,
have gladly exchanged my intelligent one), and the free-and-easy military
manners in fashion in the “’forties.” I hated the way in
which he used to talk of his future conquests of women (he did not venture to
begin his attack upon women until he had the epaulettes of an officer, and was
looking forward to them with impatience), and boasted of the duels he would
constantly be fighting. I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly
fastened upon Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his
schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as
sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would not leave
a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was his <i>droit de
seigneur</i>, and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all
flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded rascals. Our servile rabble
applauded, but I attacked him, not from compassion for the girls and their
fathers, but simply because they were applauding such an insect. I got the
better of him on that occasion, but though Zverkov was stupid he was lively and
impudent, and so laughed it off, and in such a way that my victory was not
really complete; the laugh was on his side. He got the better of me on several
occasions afterwards, but without malice, jestingly, casually. I remained
angrily and contemptuously silent and would not answer him. When we left school
he made advances to me; I did not rebuff them, for I was flattered, but we soon
parted and quite naturally. Afterwards I heard of his barrack-room success as a
lieutenant, and of the fast life he was leading. Then there came other
rumours—of his successes in the service. By then he had taken to cutting
me in the street, and I suspected that he was afraid of compromising himself by
greeting a personage as insignificant as me. I saw him once in the theatre, in
the third tier of boxes. By then he was wearing shoulder-straps. He was
twisting and twirling about, ingratiating himself with the daughters of an
ancient General. In three years he had gone off considerably, though he was
still rather handsome and adroit. One could see that by the time he was thirty
he would be corpulent. So it was to this Zverkov that my schoolfellows were
going to give a dinner on his departure. They had kept up with him for those
three years, though privately they did not consider themselves on an equal
footing with him, I am convinced of that.
</p>
<p>
Of Simonov’s two visitors, one was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised
German—a little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was
always deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the
lower forms—a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most
sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a wretched
little coward at heart. He was one of those worshippers of Zverkov who made up
to the latter from interested motives, and often borrowed money from him.
Simonov’s other visitor, Trudolyubov, was a person in no way
remarkable—a tall young fellow, in the army, with a cold face, fairly
honest, though he worshipped success of every sort, and was only capable of
thinking of promotion. He was some sort of distant relation of Zverkov’s,
and this, foolish as it seems, gave him a certain importance among us. He
always thought me of no consequence whatever; his behaviour to me, though not
quite courteous, was tolerable.
</p>
<p>
“Well, with seven roubles each,” said Trudolyubov,
“twenty-one roubles between the three of us, we ought to be able to get a
good dinner. Zverkov, of course, won’t pay.”
</p>
<p>
“Of course not, since we are inviting him,” Simonov decided.
</p>
<p>
“Can you imagine,” Ferfitchkin interrupted hotly and conceitedly,
like some insolent flunkey boasting of his master the General’s
decorations, “can you imagine that Zverkov will let us pay alone? He will
accept from delicacy, but he will order half a dozen bottles of
champagne.”
</p>
<p>
“Do we want half a dozen for the four of us?” observed Trudolyubov,
taking notice only of the half dozen.
</p>
<p>
“So the three of us, with Zverkov for the fourth, twenty-one roubles, at
the Hôtel de Paris at five o’clock tomorrow,” Simonov, who had been
asked to make the arrangements, concluded finally.
</p>
<p>
“How twenty-one roubles?” I asked in some agitation, with a show of
being offended; “if you count me it will not be twenty-one, but
twenty-eight roubles.”
</p>
<p>
It seemed to me that to invite myself so suddenly and unexpectedly would be
positively graceful, and that they would all be conquered at once and would
look at me with respect.
</p>
<p>
“Do you want to join, too?” Simonov observed, with no appearance of
pleasure, seeming to avoid looking at me. He knew me through and through.
</p>
<p>
It infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly.
</p>
<p>
“Why not? I am an old schoolfellow of his, too, I believe, and I must own
I feel hurt that you have left me out,” I said, boiling over again.
</p>
<p>
“And where were we to find you?” Ferfitchkin put in roughly.
</p>
<p>
“You never were on good terms with Zverkov,” Trudolyubov added,
frowning.
</p>
<p>
But I had already clutched at the idea and would not give it up.
</p>
<p>
“It seems to me that no one has a right to form an opinion upon
that,” I retorted in a shaking voice, as though something tremendous had
happened. “Perhaps that is just my reason for wishing it now, that I have
not always been on good terms with him.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, there’s no making you out ... with these refinements,”
Trudolyubov jeered.
</p>
<p>
“We’ll put your name down,” Simonov decided, addressing me.
“Tomorrow at five-o’clock at the Hôtel de Paris.”
</p>
<p>
“What about the money?” Ferfitchkin began in an undertone,
indicating me to Simonov, but he broke off, for even Simonov was embarrassed.
</p>
<p>
“That will do,” said Trudolyubov, getting up. “If he wants to
come so much, let him.”
</p>
<p>
“But it’s a private thing, between us friends,” Ferfitchkin
said crossly, as he, too, picked up his hat. “It’s not an official
gathering.”
</p>
<p>
“We do not want at all, perhaps ...”
</p>
<p>
They went away. Ferfitchkin did not greet me in any way as he went out,
Trudolyubov barely nodded. Simonov, with whom I was left <i>tête-à-tête</i>,
was in a state of vexation and perplexity, and looked at me queerly. He did not
sit down and did not ask me to.
</p>
<p>
“H’m ... yes ... tomorrow, then. Will you pay your subscription
now? I just ask so as to know,” he muttered in embarrassment.
</p>
<p>
I flushed crimson, as I did so I remembered that I had owed Simonov fifteen
roubles for ages—which I had, indeed, never forgotten, though I had not
paid it.
</p>
<p>
“You will understand, Simonov, that I could have no idea when I came
here.... I am very much vexed that I have forgotten....”
</p>
<p>
“All right, all right, that doesn’t matter. You can pay tomorrow
after the dinner. I simply wanted to know.... Please don’t...”
</p>
<p>
He broke off and began pacing the room still more vexed. As he walked he began
to stamp with his heels.
</p>
<p>
“Am I keeping you?” I asked, after two minutes of silence.
</p>
<p>
“Oh!” he said, starting, “that is—to be
truthful—yes. I have to go and see someone ... not far from here,”
he added in an apologetic voice, somewhat abashed.
</p>
<p>
“My goodness, why didn’t you say so?” I cried, seizing my
cap, with an astonishingly free-and-easy air, which was the last thing I should
have expected of myself.
</p>
<p>
“It’s close by ... not two paces away,” Simonov repeated,
accompanying me to the front door with a fussy air which did not suit him at
all. “So five o’clock, punctually, tomorrow,” he called down
the stairs after me. He was very glad to get rid of me. I was in a fury.
</p>
<p>
“What possessed me, what possessed me to force myself upon them?” I
wondered, grinding my teeth as I strode along the street, “for a
scoundrel, a pig like that Zverkov! Of course I had better not go; of course, I
must just snap my fingers at them. I am not bound in any way. I’ll send
Simonov a note by tomorrow’s post....”
</p>
<p>
But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go, that I
should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more unseemly my going
would be, the more certainly I would go.
</p>
<p>
And there was a positive obstacle to my going: I had no money. All I had was
nine roubles, I had to give seven of that to my servant, Apollon, for his
monthly wages. That was all I paid him—he had to keep himself.
</p>
<p>
Not to pay him was impossible, considering his character. But I will talk about
that fellow, about that plague of mine, another time.
</p>
<p>
However, I knew I should go and should not pay him his wages.
</p>
<p>
That night I had the most hideous dreams. No wonder; all the evening I had been
oppressed by memories of my miserable days at school, and I could not shake
them off. I was sent to the school by distant relations, upon whom I was
dependent and of whom I have heard nothing since—they sent me there a
forlorn, silent boy, already crushed by their reproaches, already troubled by
doubt, and looking with savage distrust at everyone. My schoolfellows met me
with spiteful and merciless jibes because I was not like any of them. But I
could not endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble
readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first,
and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate
pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed cynically at my face, at my
clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves. In our school the
boys’ faces seemed in a special way to degenerate and grow stupider. How
many fine-looking boys came to us! In a few years they became repulsive. Even
at sixteen I wondered at them morosely; even then I was struck by the pettiness
of their thoughts, the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, their
conversations. They had no understanding of such essential things, they took no
interest in such striking, impressive subjects, that I could not help
considering them inferior to myself. It was not wounded vanity that drove me to
it, and for God’s sake do not thrust upon me your hackneyed remarks,
repeated to nausea, that “I was only a dreamer,” while they even
then had an understanding of life. They understood nothing, they had no idea of
real life, and I swear that that was what made me most indignant with them. On
the contrary, the most obvious, striking reality they accepted with fantastic
stupidity and even at that time were accustomed to respect success. Everything
that was just, but oppressed and looked down upon, they laughed at heartlessly
and shamefully. They took rank for intelligence; even at sixteen they were
already talking about a snug berth. Of course, a great deal of it was due to
their stupidity, to the bad examples with which they had always been surrounded
in their childhood and boyhood. They were monstrously depraved. Of course a
great deal of that, too, was superficial and an assumption of cynicism; of
course there were glimpses of youth and freshness even in their depravity; but
even that freshness was not attractive, and showed itself in a certain
rakishness. I hated them horribly, though perhaps I was worse than any of them.
They repaid me in the same way, and did not conceal their aversion for me. But
by then I did not desire their affection: on the contrary, I continually longed
for their humiliation. To escape from their derision I purposely began to make
all the progress I could with my studies and forced my way to the very top.
This impressed them. Moreover, they all began by degrees to grasp that I had
already read books none of them could read, and understood things (not forming
part of our school curriculum) of which they had not even heard. They took a
savage and sarcastic view of it, but were morally impressed, especially as the
teachers began to notice me on those grounds. The mockery ceased, but the
hostility remained, and cold and strained relations became permanent between
us. In the end I could not put up with it: with years a craving for society,
for friends, developed in me. I attempted to get on friendly terms with some of
my schoolfellows; but somehow or other my intimacy with them was always
strained and soon ended of itself. Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was
already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him; I
tried to instil into him a contempt for his surroundings; I required of him a
disdainful and complete break with those surroundings. I frightened him with my
passionate affection; I reduced him to tears, to hysterics. He was a simple and
devoted soul; but when he devoted himself to me entirely I began to hate him
immediately and repulsed him—as though all I needed him for was to win a
victory over him, to subjugate him and nothing else. But I could not subjugate
all of them; my friend was not at all like them either, he was, in fact, a rare
exception. The first thing I did on leaving school was to give up the special
job for which I had been destined so as to break all ties, to curse my past and
shake the dust from off my feet.... And goodness knows why, after all that, I
should go trudging off to Simonov’s!
</p>
<p>
Early next morning I roused myself and jumped out of bed with excitement, as
though it were all about to happen at once. But I believed that some radical
change in my life was coming, and would inevitably come that day. Owing to its
rarity, perhaps, any external event, however trivial, always made me feel as
though some radical change in my life were at hand. I went to the office,
however, as usual, but sneaked away home two hours earlier to get ready. The
great thing, I thought, is not to be the first to arrive, or they will think I
am overjoyed at coming. But there were thousands of such great points to
consider, and they all agitated and overwhelmed me. I polished my boots a
second time with my own hands; nothing in the world would have induced Apollon
to clean them twice a day, as he considered that it was more than his duties
required of him. I stole the brushes to clean them from the passage, being
careful he should not detect it, for fear of his contempt. Then I minutely
examined my clothes and thought that everything looked old, worn and
threadbare. I had let myself get too slovenly. My uniform, perhaps, was tidy,
but I could not go out to dinner in my uniform. The worst of it was that on the
knee of my trousers was a big yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain
would deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity. I knew, too, that it
was very poor to think so. “But this is no time for thinking: now I am in
for the real thing,” I thought, and my heart sank. I knew, too, perfectly
well even then, that I was monstrously exaggerating the facts. But how could I
help it? I could not control myself and was already shaking with fever. With
despair I pictured to myself how coldly and disdainfully that
“scoundrel” Zverkov would meet me; with what dull-witted,
invincible contempt the blockhead Trudolyubov would look at me; with what
impudent rudeness the insect Ferfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry
favour with Zverkov; how completely Simonov would take it all in, and how he
would despise me for the abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit—and,
worst of all, how paltry, <i>unliterary</i>, commonplace it would all be. Of
course, the best thing would be not to go at all. But that was most impossible
of all: if I feel impelled to do anything, I seem to be pitchforked into it. I
should have jeered at myself ever afterwards: “So you funked it, you
funked it, you funked the <i>real thing!</i>” On the contrary, I
passionately longed to show all that “rabble” that I was by no
means such a spiritless creature as I seemed to myself. What is more, even in
the acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the upper
hand, of dominating them, carrying them away, making them like me—if only
for my “elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.” They would
abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed, while I should
crush him. Then, perhaps, we would be reconciled and drink to our everlasting
friendship; but what was most bitter and humiliating for me was that I knew
even then, knew fully and for certain, that I needed nothing of all this
really, that I did not really want to crush, to subdue, to attract them, and
that I did not care a straw really for the result, even if I did achieve it.
Oh, how I prayed for the day to pass quickly! In unutterable anguish I went to
the window, opened the movable pane and looked out into the troubled darkness
of the thickly falling wet snow. At last my wretched little clock hissed out
five. I seized my hat and, trying not to look at Apollon, who had been all day
expecting his month’s wages, but in his foolishness was unwilling to be
the first to speak about it, I slipped between him and the door and, jumping
into a high-class sledge, on which I spent my last half rouble, I drove up in
grand style to the Hôtel de Paris.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap15"></a>IV</h2>
<p>
I had been certain the day before that I should be the first to arrive. But it
was not a question of being the first to arrive. Not only were they not there,
but I had difficulty in finding our room. The table was not laid even. What did
it mean? After a good many questions I elicited from the waiters that the
dinner had been ordered not for five, but for six o’clock. This was
confirmed at the buffet too. I felt really ashamed to go on questioning them.
It was only twenty-five minutes past five. If they changed the dinner hour they
ought at least to have let me know—that is what the post is for, and not
to have put me in an absurd position in my own eyes and ... and even before the
waiters. I sat down; the servant began laying the table; I felt even more
humiliated when he was present. Towards six o’clock they brought in
candles, though there were lamps burning in the room. It had not occurred to
the waiter, however, to bring them in at once when I arrived. In the next room
two gloomy, angry-looking persons were eating their dinners in silence at two
different tables. There was a great deal of noise, even shouting, in a room
further away; one could hear the laughter of a crowd of people, and nasty
little shrieks in French: there were ladies at the dinner. It was sickening, in
fact. I rarely passed more unpleasant moments, so much so that when they did
arrive all together punctually at six I was overjoyed to see them, as though
they were my deliverers, and even forgot that it was incumbent upon me to show
resentment.
</p>
<p>
Zverkov walked in at the head of them; evidently he was the leading spirit. He
and all of them were laughing; but, seeing me, Zverkov drew himself up a
little, walked up to me deliberately with a slight, rather jaunty bend from the
waist. He shook hands with me in a friendly, but not over-friendly, fashion,
with a sort of circumspect courtesy like that of a General, as though in giving
me his hand he were warding off something. I had imagined, on the contrary,
that on coming in he would at once break into his habitual thin, shrill laugh
and fall to making his insipid jokes and witticisms. I had been preparing for
them ever since the previous day, but I had not expected such condescension,
such high-official courtesy. So, then, he felt himself ineffably superior to me
in every respect! If he only meant to insult me by that high-official tone, it
would not matter, I thought—I could pay him back for it one way or
another. But what if, in reality, without the least desire to be offensive,
that sheepshead had a notion in earnest that he was superior to me and could
only look at me in a patronising way? The very supposition made me gasp.
</p>
<p>
“I was surprised to hear of your desire to join us,” he began,
lisping and drawling, which was something new. “You and I seem to have
seen nothing of one another. You fight shy of us. You shouldn’t. We are
not such terrible people as you think. Well, anyway, I am glad to renew our
acquaintance.”
</p>
<p>
And he turned carelessly to put down his hat on the window.
</p>
<p>
“Have you been waiting long?” Trudolyubov inquired.
</p>
<p>
“I arrived at five o’clock as you told me yesterday,” I
answered aloud, with an irritability that threatened an explosion.
</p>
<p>
“Didn’t you let him know that we had changed the hour?” said
Trudolyubov to Simonov.
</p>
<p>
“No, I didn’t. I forgot,” the latter replied, with no sign of
regret, and without even apologising to me he went off to order the <i>hors
d’œuvres</i>.
</p>
<p>
“So you’ve been here a whole hour? Oh, poor fellow!” Zverkov
cried ironically, for to his notions this was bound to be extremely funny. That
rascal Ferfitchkin followed with his nasty little snigger like a puppy yapping.
My position struck him, too, as exquisitely ludicrous and embarrassing.
</p>
<p>
“It isn’t funny at all!” I cried to Ferfitchkin, more and
more irritated. “It wasn’t my fault, but other people’s. They
neglected to let me know. It was ... it was ... it was simply absurd.”
</p>
<p>
“It’s not only absurd, but something else as well,” muttered
Trudolyubov, naively taking my part. “You are not hard enough upon it. It
was simply rudeness—unintentional, of course. And how could Simonov ...
h’m!”
</p>
<p>
“If a trick like that had been played on me,” observed Ferfitchkin,
“I should ...”
</p>
<p>
“But you should have ordered something for yourself,” Zverkov
interrupted, “or simply asked for dinner without waiting for us.”
</p>
<p>
“You will allow that I might have done that without your
permission,” I rapped out. “If I waited, it was ...”
</p>
<p>
“Let us sit down, gentlemen,” cried Simonov, coming in.
“Everything is ready; I can answer for the champagne; it is capitally
frozen.... You see, I did not know your address, where was I to look for
you?” he suddenly turned to me, but again he seemed to avoid looking at
me. Evidently he had something against me. It must have been what happened
yesterday.
</p>
<p>
All sat down; I did the same. It was a round table. Trudolyubov was on my left,
Simonov on my right, Zverkov was sitting opposite, Ferfitchkin next to him,
between him and Trudolyubov.
</p>
<p>
“Tell me, are you ... in a government office?” Zverkov went on
attending to me. Seeing that I was embarrassed he seriously thought that he
ought to be friendly to me, and, so to speak, cheer me up.
</p>
<p>
“Does he want me to throw a bottle at his head?” I thought, in a
fury. In my novel surroundings I was unnaturally ready to be irritated.
</p>
<p>
“In the N—— office,” I answered jerkily, with my eyes
on my plate.
</p>
<p>
“And ha-ave you a go-od berth? I say, what ma-a-de you leave your
original job?”
</p>
<p>
“What ma-a-de me was that I wanted to leave my original job,” I
drawled more than he, hardly able to control myself. Ferfitchkin went off into
a guffaw. Simonov looked at me ironically. Trudolyubov left off eating and
began looking at me with curiosity.
</p>
<p>
Zverkov winced, but he tried not to notice it.
</p>
<p>
“And the remuneration?”
</p>
<p>
“What remuneration?”
</p>
<p>
“I mean, your sa-a-lary?”
</p>
<p>
“Why are you cross-examining me?” However, I told him at once what
my salary was. I turned horribly red.
</p>
<p>
“It is not very handsome,” Zverkov observed majestically.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, you can’t afford to dine at cafés on that,” Ferfitchkin
added insolently.
</p>
<p>
“To my thinking it’s very poor,” Trudolyubov observed
gravely.
</p>
<p>
“And how thin you have grown! How you have changed!” added Zverkov,
with a shade of venom in his voice, scanning me and my attire with a sort of
insolent compassion.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, spare his blushes,” cried Ferfitchkin, sniggering.
</p>
<p>
“My dear sir, allow me to tell you I am not blushing,” I broke out
at last; “do you hear? I am dining here, at this cafe, at my own expense,
not at other people’s—note that, Mr. Ferfitchkin.”
</p>
<p>
“Wha-at? Isn’t every one here dining at his own expense? You would
seem to be ...” Ferfitchkin flew out at me, turning as red as a lobster,
and looking me in the face with fury.
</p>
<p>
“Tha-at,” I answered, feeling I had gone too far, “and I
imagine it would be better to talk of something more intelligent.”
</p>
<p>
“You intend to show off your intelligence, I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t disturb yourself, that would be quite out of place
here.”
</p>
<p>
“Why are you clacking away like that, my good sir, eh? Have you gone out
of your wits in your office?”
</p>
<p>
“Enough, gentlemen, enough!” Zverkov cried, authoritatively.
</p>
<p>
“How stupid it is!” muttered Simonov.
</p>
<p>
“It really is stupid. We have met here, a company of friends, for a
farewell dinner to a comrade and you carry on an altercation,” said
Trudolyubov, rudely addressing himself to me alone. “You invited yourself
to join us, so don’t disturb the general harmony.”
</p>
<p>
“Enough, enough!” cried Zverkov. “Give over, gentlemen,
it’s out of place. Better let me tell you how I nearly got married the
day before yesterday....”
</p>
<p>
And then followed a burlesque narrative of how this gentleman had almost been
married two days before. There was not a word about the marriage, however, but
the story was adorned with generals, colonels and kammer-junkers, while Zverkov
almost took the lead among them. It was greeted with approving laughter;
Ferfitchkin positively squealed.
</p>
<p>
No one paid any attention to me, and I sat crushed and humiliated.
</p>
<p>
“Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!” I thought.
“And what a fool I have made of myself before them! I let Ferfitchkin go
too far, though. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me
sit down with them. They don’t understand that it’s an honour to
them and not to me! I’ve grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers!
Zverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he came in.... But
what’s the use! I must get up at once, this very minute, take my hat and
simply go without a word ... with contempt! And tomorrow I can send a
challenge. The scoundrels! As though I cared about the seven roubles. They may
think.... Damn it! I don’t care about the seven roubles. I’ll go
this minute!”
</p>
<p>
Of course I remained. I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my
discomfiture. Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected. My annoyance
increased as the wine went to my head. I longed all at once to insult them all
in a most flagrant manner and then go away. To seize the moment and show what I
could do, so that they would say, “He’s clever, though he is
absurd,” and ... and ... in fact, damn them all!
</p>
<p>
I scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes. But they seemed to have
forgotten me altogether. They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful. Zverkov was
talking all the time. I began listening. Zverkov was talking of some exuberant
lady whom he had at last led on to declaring her love (of course, he was lying
like a horse), and how he had been helped in this affair by an intimate friend
of his, a Prince Kolya, an officer in the hussars, who had three thousand
serfs.
</p>
<p>
“And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an
appearance here tonight to see you off,” I cut in suddenly.
</p>
<p>
For one minute every one was silent. “You are drunk already.”
Trudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my
direction. Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an insect. I
dropped my eyes. Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses with champagne.
</p>
<p>
Trudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me.
</p>
<p>
“Your health and good luck on the journey!” he cried to Zverkov.
“To old times, to our future, hurrah!”
</p>
<p>
They all tossed off their glasses, and crowded round Zverkov to kiss him. I did
not move; my full glass stood untouched before me.
</p>
<p>
“Why, aren’t you going to drink it?” roared Trudolyubov,
losing patience and turning menacingly to me.
</p>
<p>
“I want to make a speech separately, on my own account ... and then
I’ll drink it, Mr. Trudolyubov.”
</p>
<p>
“Spiteful brute!” muttered Simonov. I drew myself up in my chair
and feverishly seized my glass, prepared for something extraordinary, though I
did not know myself precisely what I was going to say.
</p>
<p>
“<i>Silence!</i>” cried Ferfitchkin. “Now for a display of
wit!”
</p>
<p>
Zverkov waited very gravely, knowing what was coming.
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Lieutenant Zverkov,” I began, “let me tell you that I
hate phrases, phrasemongers and men in corsets ... that’s the first
point, and there is a second one to follow it.”
</p>
<p>
There was a general stir.
</p>
<p>
“The second point is: I hate ribaldry and ribald talkers. Especially
ribald talkers! The third point: I love justice, truth and honesty.” I
went on almost mechanically, for I was beginning to shiver with horror myself
and had no idea how I came to be talking like this. “I love thought,
Monsieur Zverkov; I love true comradeship, on an equal footing and not ...
H’m ... I love ... But, however, why not? I will drink your health, too,
Mr. Zverkov. Seduce the Circassian girls, shoot the enemies of the fatherland
and ... and ... to your health, Monsieur Zverkov!”
</p>
<p>
Zverkov got up from his seat, bowed to me and said:
</p>
<p>
“I am very much obliged to you.” He was frightfully offended and
turned pale.
</p>
<p>
“Damn the fellow!” roared Trudolyubov, bringing his fist down on
the table.
</p>
<p>
“Well, he wants a punch in the face for that,” squealed
Ferfitchkin.
</p>
<p>
“We ought to turn him out,” muttered Simonov.
</p>
<p>
“Not a word, gentlemen, not a movement!” cried Zverkov solemnly,
checking the general indignation. “I thank you all, but I can show him
for myself how much value I attach to his words.”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Ferfitchkin, you will give me satisfaction tomorrow for your words
just now!” I said aloud, turning with dignity to Ferfitchkin.
</p>
<p>
“A duel, you mean? Certainly,” he answered. But probably I was so
ridiculous as I challenged him and it was so out of keeping with my appearance
that everyone including Ferfitchkin was prostrate with laughter.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, let him alone, of course! He is quite drunk,” Trudolyubov
said with disgust.
</p>
<p>
“I shall never forgive myself for letting him join us,” Simonov
muttered again.
</p>
<p>
“Now is the time to throw a bottle at their heads,” I thought to
myself. I picked up the bottle ... and filled my glass.... “No, I’d
better sit on to the end,” I went on thinking; “you would be
pleased, my friends, if I went away. Nothing will induce me to go. I’ll
go on sitting here and drinking to the end, on purpose, as a sign that I
don’t think you of the slightest consequence. I will go on sitting and
drinking, because this is a public-house and I paid my entrance money.
I’ll sit here and drink, for I look upon you as so many pawns, as
inanimate pawns. I’ll sit here and drink ... and sing if I want to, yes,
sing, for I have the right to ... to sing ... H’m!”
</p>
<p>
But I did not sing. I simply tried not to look at any of them. I assumed most
unconcerned attitudes and waited with impatience for them to speak
<i>first</i>. But alas, they did not address me! And oh, how I wished, how I
wished at that moment to be reconciled to them! It struck eight, at last nine.
They moved from the table to the sofa. Zverkov stretched himself on a lounge
and put one foot on a round table. Wine was brought there. He did, as a fact,
order three bottles on his own account. I, of course, was not invited to join
them. They all sat round him on the sofa. They listened to him, almost with
reverence. It was evident that they were fond of him. “What for? What
for?” I wondered. From time to time they were moved to drunken enthusiasm
and kissed each other. They talked of the Caucasus, of the nature of true
passion, of snug berths in the service, of the income of an hussar called
Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew personally, and rejoiced in the largeness
of it, of the extraordinary grace and beauty of a Princess D., whom none of
them had ever seen; then it came to Shakespeare’s being immortal.
</p>
<p>
I smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the room,
opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again. I tried my very
utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet I purposely made a
noise with my boots, thumping with my heels. But it was all in vain. They paid
no attention. I had the patience to walk up and down in front of them from
eight o’clock till eleven, in the same place, from the table to the stove
and back again. “I walk up and down to please myself and no one can
prevent me.” The waiter who came into the room stopped, from time to
time, to look at me. I was somewhat giddy from turning round so often; at
moments it seemed to me that I was in delirium. During those three hours I was
three times soaked with sweat and dry again. At times, with an intense, acute
pang I was stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years,
forty years would pass, and that even in forty years I would remember with
loathing and humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most awful
moments of my life. No one could have gone out of his way to degrade himself
more shamelessly, and I fully realised it, fully, and yet I went on pacing up
and down from the table to the stove. “Oh, if you only knew what thoughts
and feelings I am capable of, how cultured I am!” I thought at moments,
mentally addressing the sofa on which my enemies were sitting. But my enemies
behaved as though I were not in the room. Once—only once—they
turned towards me, just when Zverkov was talking about Shakespeare, and I
suddenly gave a contemptuous laugh. I laughed in such an affected and
disgusting way that they all at once broke off their conversation, and silently
and gravely for two minutes watched me walking up and down from the table to
the stove, <i>taking no notice of them</i>. But nothing came of it: they said
nothing, and two minutes later they ceased to notice me again. It struck
eleven.
</p>
<p>
“Friends,” cried Zverkov getting up from the sofa, “let us
all be off now, <i>there!</i>”
</p>
<p>
“Of course, of course,” the others assented. I turned sharply to
Zverkov. I was so harassed, so exhausted, that I would have cut my throat to
put an end to it. I was in a fever; my hair, soaked with perspiration, stuck to
my forehead and temples.
</p>
<p>
“Zverkov, I beg your pardon,” I said abruptly and resolutely.
“Ferfitchkin, yours too, and everyone’s, everyone’s: I have
insulted you all!”
</p>
<p>
“Aha! A duel is not in your line, old man,” Ferfitchkin hissed
venomously.
</p>
<p>
It sent a sharp pang to my heart.
</p>
<p>
“No, it’s not the duel I am afraid of, Ferfitchkin! I am ready to
fight you tomorrow, after we are reconciled. I insist upon it, in fact, and you
cannot refuse. I want to show you that I am not afraid of a duel. You shall
fire first and I shall fire into the air.”
</p>
<p>
“He is comforting himself,” said Simonov.
</p>
<p>
“He’s simply raving,” said Trudolyubov.
</p>
<p>
“But let us pass. Why are you barring our way? What do you want?”
Zverkov answered disdainfully.
</p>
<p>
They were all flushed, their eyes were bright: they had been drinking heavily.
</p>
<p>
“I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted you, but ...”
</p>
<p>
“Insulted? <i>You</i> insulted <i>me?</i> Understand, sir, that you
never, under any circumstances, could possibly insult <i>me</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“And that’s enough for you. Out of the way!” concluded
Trudolyubov.
</p>
<p>
“Olympia is mine, friends, that’s agreed!” cried Zverkov.
</p>
<p>
“We won’t dispute your right, we won’t dispute your
right,” the others answered, laughing.
</p>
<p>
I stood as though spat upon. The party went noisily out of the room.
Trudolyubov struck up some stupid song. Simonov remained behind for a moment to
tip the waiters. I suddenly went up to him.
</p>
<p>
“Simonov! give me six roubles!” I said, with desperate resolution.
</p>
<p>
He looked at me in extreme amazement, with vacant eyes. He, too, was drunk.
</p>
<p>
“You don’t mean you are coming with us?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“I’ve no money,” he snapped out, and with a scornful laugh he
went out of the room.
</p>
<p>
I clutched at his overcoat. It was a nightmare.
</p>
<p>
“Simonov, I saw you had money. Why do you refuse me? Am I a scoundrel?
Beware of refusing me: if you knew, if you knew why I am asking! My whole
future, my whole plans depend upon it!”
</p>
<p>
Simonov pulled out the money and almost flung it at me.
</p>
<p>
“Take it, if you have no sense of shame!” he pronounced pitilessly,
and ran to overtake them.
</p>
<p>
I was left for a moment alone. Disorder, the remains of dinner, a broken
wine-glass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette ends, fumes of drink and
delirium in my brain, an agonising misery in my heart and finally the waiter,
who had seen and heard all and was looking inquisitively into my face.
</p>
<p>
“I am going there!” I cried. “Either they shall all go down
on their knees to beg for my friendship, or I will give Zverkov a slap in the
face!”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap16"></a>V</h2>
<p>
“So this is it, this is it at last—contact with real life,” I
muttered as I ran headlong downstairs. “This is very different from the
Pope’s leaving Rome and going to Brazil, very different from the ball on
Lake Como!”
</p>
<p>
“You are a scoundrel,” a thought flashed through my mind, “if
you laugh at this now.”
</p>
<p>
“No matter!” I cried, answering myself. “Now everything is
lost!”
</p>
<p>
There was no trace to be seen of them, but that made no difference—I knew
where they had gone.
</p>
<p>
At the steps was standing a solitary night sledge-driver in a rough peasant
coat, powdered over with the still falling, wet, and as it were warm, snow. It
was hot and steamy. The little shaggy piebald horse was also covered with snow
and coughing, I remember that very well. I made a rush for the roughly made
sledge; but as soon as I raised my foot to get into it, the recollection of how
Simonov had just given me six roubles seemed to double me up and I tumbled into
the sledge like a sack.
</p>
<p>
“No, I must do a great deal to make up for all that,” I cried.
“But I will make up for it or perish on the spot this very night.
Start!”
</p>
<p>
We set off. There was a perfect whirl in my head.
</p>
<p>
“They won’t go down on their knees to beg for my friendship. That
is a mirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and
fantastical—that’s another ball on Lake Como. And so I am bound to
slap Zverkov’s face! It is my duty to. And so it is settled; I am flying
to give him a slap in the face. Hurry up!”
</p>
<p>
The driver tugged at the reins.
</p>
<p>
“As soon as I go in I’ll give it him. Ought I before giving him the
slap to say a few words by way of preface? No. I’ll simply go in and give
it him. They will all be sitting in the drawing-room, and he with Olympia on
the sofa. That damned Olympia! She laughed at my looks on one occasion and
refused me. I’ll pull Olympia’s hair, pull Zverkov’s ears!
No, better one ear, and pull him by it round the room. Maybe they will all
begin beating me and will kick me out. That’s most likely, indeed. No
matter! Anyway, I shall first slap him; the initiative will be mine; and by the
laws of honour that is everything: he will be branded and cannot wipe off the
slap by any blows, by nothing but a duel. He will be forced to fight. And let
them beat me now. Let them, the ungrateful wretches! Trudolyubov will beat me
hardest, he is so strong; Ferfitchkin will be sure to catch hold sideways and
tug at my hair. But no matter, no matter! That’s what I am going for. The
blockheads will be forced at last to see the tragedy of it all! When they drag
me to the door I shall call out to them that in reality they are not worth my
little finger. Get on, driver, get on!” I cried to the driver. He started
and flicked his whip, I shouted so savagely.
</p>
<p>
“We shall fight at daybreak, that’s a settled thing. I’ve
done with the office. Ferfitchkin made a joke about it just now. But where can
I get pistols? Nonsense! I’ll get my salary in advance and buy them. And
powder, and bullets? That’s the second’s business. And how can it
all be done by daybreak? and where am I to get a second? I have no friends.
Nonsense!” I cried, lashing myself up more and more. “It’s of
no consequence! The first person I meet in the street is bound to be my second,
just as he would be bound to pull a drowning man out of water. The most
eccentric things may happen. Even if I were to ask the director himself to be
my second tomorrow, he would be bound to consent, if only from a feeling of
chivalry, and to keep the secret! Anton Antonitch....”
</p>
<p>
The fact is, that at that very minute the disgusting absurdity of my plan and
the other side of the question was clearer and more vivid to my imagination
than it could be to anyone on earth. But ....
</p>
<p>
“Get on, driver, get on, you rascal, get on!”
</p>
<p>
“Ugh, sir!” said the son of toil.
</p>
<p>
Cold shivers suddenly ran down me. Wouldn’t it be better ... to go
straight home? My God, my God! Why did I invite myself to this dinner
yesterday? But no, it’s impossible. And my walking up and down for three
hours from the table to the stove? No, they, they and no one else must pay for
my walking up and down! They must wipe out this dishonour! Drive on!
</p>
<p>
And what if they give me into custody? They won’t dare! They’ll be
afraid of the scandal. And what if Zverkov is so contemptuous that he refuses
to fight a duel? He is sure to; but in that case I’ll show them ... I
will turn up at the posting station when he’s setting off tomorrow,
I’ll catch him by the leg, I’ll pull off his coat when he gets into
the carriage. I’ll get my teeth into his hand, I’ll bite him.
“See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!” He may hit me
on the head and they may belabour me from behind. I will shout to the assembled
multitude: “Look at this young puppy who is driving off to captivate the
Circassian girls after letting me spit in his face!”
</p>
<p>
Of course, after that everything will be over! The office will have vanished
off the face of the earth. I shall be arrested, I shall be tried, I shall be
dismissed from the service, thrown in prison, sent to Siberia. Never mind! In
fifteen years when they let me out of prison I will trudge off to him, a
beggar, in rags. I shall find him in some provincial town. He will be married
and happy. He will have a grown-up daughter.... I shall say to him:
“Look, monster, at my hollow cheeks and my rags! I’ve lost
everything—my career, my happiness, art, science, <i>the woman I
loved</i>, and all through you. Here are pistols. I have come to discharge my
pistol and ... and I ... forgive you. Then I shall fire into the air and he
will hear nothing more of me....”
</p>
<p>
I was actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at that
moment that all this was out of Pushkin’s <i>Silvio</i> and
Lermontov’s <i>Masquerade</i>. And all at once I felt horribly ashamed,
so ashamed that I stopped the horse, got out of the sledge, and stood still in
the snow in the middle of the street. The driver gazed at me, sighing and
astonished.
</p>
<p>
What was I to do? I could not go on there—it was evidently stupid, and I
could not leave things as they were, because that would seem as though ...
Heavens, how could I leave things! And after such insults! “No!” I
cried, throwing myself into the sledge again. “It is ordained! It is
fate! Drive on, drive on!”
</p>
<p>
And in my impatience I punched the sledge-driver on the back of the neck.
</p>
<p>
“What are you up to? What are you hitting me for?” the peasant
shouted, but he whipped up his nag so that it began kicking.
</p>
<p>
The wet snow was falling in big flakes; I unbuttoned myself, regardless of it.
I forgot everything else, for I had finally decided on the slap, and felt with
horror that it was going to happen <i>now, at once</i>, and that <i>no force
could stop it</i>. The deserted street lamps gleamed sullenly in the snowy
darkness like torches at a funeral. The snow drifted under my great-coat, under
my coat, under my cravat, and melted there. I did not wrap myself up—all
was lost, anyway.
</p>
<p>
At last we arrived. I jumped out, almost unconscious, ran up the steps and
began knocking and kicking at the door. I felt fearfully weak, particularly in
my legs and knees. The door was opened quickly as though they knew I was
coming. As a fact, Simonov had warned them that perhaps another gentleman would
arrive, and this was a place in which one had to give notice and to observe
certain precautions. It was one of those “millinery establishments”
which were abolished by the police a good time ago. By day it really was a
shop; but at night, if one had an introduction, one might visit it for other
purposes.
</p>
<p>
I walked rapidly through the dark shop into the familiar drawing-room, where
there was only one candle burning, and stood still in amazement: there was no
one there. “Where are they?” I asked somebody. But by now, of
course, they had separated. Before me was standing a person with a stupid
smile, the “madam” herself, who had seen me before. A minute later
a door opened and another person came in.
</p>
<p>
Taking no notice of anything I strode about the room, and, I believe, I talked
to myself. I felt as though I had been saved from death and was conscious of
this, joyfully, all over: I should have given that slap, I should certainly,
certainly have given it! But now they were not here and ... everything had
vanished and changed! I looked round. I could not realise my condition yet. I
looked mechanically at the girl who had come in: and had a glimpse of a fresh,
young, rather pale face, with straight, dark eyebrows, and with grave, as it
were wondering, eyes that attracted me at once; I should have hated her if she
had been smiling. I began looking at her more intently and, as it were, with
effort. I had not fully collected my thoughts. There was something simple and
good-natured in her face, but something strangely grave. I am sure that this
stood in her way here, and no one of those fools had noticed her. She could
not, however, have been called a beauty, though she was tall, strong-looking,
and well built. She was very simply dressed. Something loathsome stirred within
me. I went straight up to her.
</p>
<p>
I chanced to look into the glass. My harassed face struck me as revolting in
the extreme, pale, angry, abject, with dishevelled hair. “No matter, I am
glad of it,” I thought; “I am glad that I shall seem repulsive to
her; I like that.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap17"></a>VI</h2>
<p>
... Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though oppressed by
something, as though someone were strangling it. After an unnaturally prolonged
wheezing there followed a shrill, nasty, and as it were unexpectedly rapid,
chime—as though someone were suddenly jumping forward. It struck two. I
woke up, though I had indeed not been asleep but lying half-conscious.
</p>
<p>
It was almost completely dark in the narrow, cramped, low-pitched room,
cumbered up with an enormous wardrobe and piles of cardboard boxes and all
sorts of frippery and litter. The candle end that had been burning on the table
was going out and gave a faint flicker from time to time. In a few minutes
there would be complete darkness.
</p>
<p>
I was not long in coming to myself; everything came back to my mind at once,
without an effort, as though it had been in ambush to pounce upon me again.
And, indeed, even while I was unconscious a point seemed continually to remain
in my memory unforgotten, and round it my dreams moved drearily. But strange to
say, everything that had happened to me in that day seemed to me now, on
waking, to be in the far, far away past, as though I had long, long ago lived
all that down.
</p>
<p>
My head was full of fumes. Something seemed to be hovering over me, rousing me,
exciting me, and making me restless. Misery and spite seemed surging up in me
again and seeking an outlet. Suddenly I saw beside me two wide open eyes
scrutinising me curiously and persistently. The look in those eyes was coldly
detached, sullen, as it were utterly remote; it weighed upon me.
</p>
<p>
A grim idea came into my brain and passed all over my body, as a horrible
sensation, such as one feels when one goes into a damp and mouldy cellar. There
was something unnatural in those two eyes, beginning to look at me only now. I
recalled, too, that during those two hours I had not said a single word to this
creature, and had, in fact, considered it utterly superfluous; in fact, the
silence had for some reason gratified me. Now I suddenly realised vividly the
hideous idea—revolting as a spider—of vice, which, without love,
grossly and shamelessly begins with that in which true love finds its
consummation. For a long time we gazed at each other like that, but she did not
drop her eyes before mine and her expression did not change, so that at last I
felt uncomfortable.
</p>
<p>
“What is your name?” I asked abruptly, to put an end to it.
</p>
<p>
“Liza,” she answered almost in a whisper, but somehow far from
graciously, and she turned her eyes away.
</p>
<p>
I was silent.
</p>
<p>
“What weather! The snow ... it’s disgusting!” I said, almost
to myself, putting my arm under my head despondently, and gazing at the
ceiling.
</p>
<p>
She made no answer. This was horrible.
</p>
<p>
“Have you always lived in Petersburg?” I asked a minute later,
almost angrily, turning my head slightly towards her.
</p>
<p>
“No.”
</p>
<p>
“Where do you come from?”
</p>
<p>
“From Riga,” she answered reluctantly.
</p>
<p>
“Are you a German?”
</p>
<p>
“No, Russian.”
</p>
<p>
“Have you been here long?”
</p>
<p>
“Where?”
</p>
<p>
“In this house?”
</p>
<p>
“A fortnight.”
</p>
<p>
She spoke more and more jerkily. The candle went out; I could no longer
distinguish her face.
</p>
<p>
“Have you a father and mother?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes ... no ... I have.”
</p>
<p>
“Where are they?”
</p>
<p>
“There ... in Riga.”
</p>
<p>
“What are they?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, nothing.”
</p>
<p>
“Nothing? Why, what class are they?”
</p>
<p>
“Tradespeople.”
</p>
<p>
“Have you always lived with them?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“How old are you?”
</p>
<p>
“Twenty.”
</p>
<p>
“Why did you leave them?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, for no reason.”
</p>
<p>
That answer meant “Let me alone; I feel sick, sad.”
</p>
<p>
We were silent.
</p>
<p>
God knows why I did not go away. I felt myself more and more sick and dreary.
The images of the previous day began of themselves, apart from my will,
flitting through my memory in confusion. I suddenly recalled something I had
seen that morning when, full of anxious thoughts, I was hurrying to the office.
</p>
<p>
“I saw them carrying a coffin out yesterday and they nearly dropped
it,” I suddenly said aloud, not that I desired to open the conversation,
but as it were by accident.
</p>
<p>
“A coffin?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, in the Haymarket; they were bringing it up out of a cellar.”
</p>
<p>
“From a cellar?”
</p>
<p>
“Not from a cellar, but a basement. Oh, you know ... down below ... from
a house of ill-fame. It was filthy all round ... Egg-shells, litter ... a
stench. It was loathsome.”
</p>
<p>
Silence.
</p>
<p>
“A nasty day to be buried,” I began, simply to avoid being silent.
</p>
<p>
“Nasty, in what way?”
</p>
<p>
“The snow, the wet.” (I yawned.)
</p>
<p>
“It makes no difference,” she said suddenly, after a brief silence.
</p>
<p>
“No, it’s horrid.” (I yawned again). “The gravediggers
must have sworn at getting drenched by the snow. And there must have been water
in the grave.”
</p>
<p>
“Why water in the grave?” she asked, with a sort of curiosity, but
speaking even more harshly and abruptly than before.
</p>
<p>
I suddenly began to feel provoked.
</p>
<p>
“Why, there must have been water at the bottom a foot deep. You
can’t dig a dry grave in Volkovo Cemetery.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?”
</p>
<p>
“Why? Why, the place is waterlogged. It’s a regular marsh. So they
bury them in water. I’ve seen it myself ... many times.”
</p>
<p>
(I had never seen it once, indeed I had never been in Volkovo, and had only
heard stories of it.)
</p>
<p>
“Do you mean to say, you don’t mind how you die?”
</p>
<p>
“But why should I die?” she answered, as though defending herself.
</p>
<p>
“Why, some day you will die, and you will die just the same as that dead
woman. She was ... a girl like you. She died of consumption.”
</p>
<p>
“A wench would have died in hospital ...” (She knows all about it
already: she said “wench,” not “girl.”)
</p>
<p>
“She was in debt to her madam,” I retorted, more and more provoked
by the discussion; “and went on earning money for her up to the end,
though she was in consumption. Some sledge-drivers standing by were talking
about her to some soldiers and telling them so. No doubt they knew her. They
were laughing. They were going to meet in a pot-house to drink to her
memory.”
</p>
<p>
A great deal of this was my invention. Silence followed, profound silence. She
did not stir.
</p>
<p>
“And is it better to die in a hospital?”
</p>
<p>
“Isn’t it just the same? Besides, why should I die?” she
added irritably.
</p>
<p>
“If not now, a little later.”
</p>
<p>
“Why a little later?”
</p>
<p>
“Why, indeed? Now you are young, pretty, fresh, you fetch a high price.
But after another year of this life you will be very different—you will
go off.”
</p>
<p>
“In a year?”
</p>
<p>
“Anyway, in a year you will be worth less,” I continued
malignantly. “You will go from here to something lower, another house; a
year later—to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come
to a basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it would be
much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ... and caught a chill, or
something or other. It’s not easy to get over an illness in your way of
life. If you catch anything you may not get rid of it. And so you would
die.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, well, then I shall die,” she answered, quite vindictively, and
she made a quick movement.
</p>
<p>
“But one is sorry.”
</p>
<p>
“Sorry for whom?”
</p>
<p>
“Sorry for life.” Silence.
</p>
<p>
“Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?”
</p>
<p>
“What’s that to you?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I am not cross-examining you. It’s nothing to me. Why are you
so cross? Of course you may have had your own troubles. What is it to me?
It’s simply that I felt sorry.”
</p>
<p>
“Sorry for whom?”
</p>
<p>
“Sorry for you.”
</p>
<p>
“No need,” she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint
movement.
</p>
<p>
That incensed me at once. What! I was so gentle with her, and she....
</p>
<p>
“Why, do you think that you are on the right path?”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t think anything.”
</p>
<p>
“That’s what’s wrong, that you don’t think. Realise it
while there is still time. There still is time. You are still young,
good-looking; you might love, be married, be happy....”
</p>
<p>
“Not all married women are happy,” she snapped out in the rude
abrupt tone she had used at first.
</p>
<p>
“Not all, of course, but anyway it is much better than the life here.
Infinitely better. Besides, with love one can live even without happiness. Even
in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one lives. But here what is
there but ... foulness? Phew!”
</p>
<p>
I turned away with disgust; I was no longer reasoning coldly. I began to feel
myself what I was saying and warmed to the subject. I was already longing to
expound the cherished ideas I had brooded over in my corner. Something suddenly
flared up in me. An object had appeared before me.
</p>
<p>
“Never mind my being here, I am not an example for you. I am, perhaps,
worse than you are. I was drunk when I came here, though,” I hastened,
however, to say in self-defence. “Besides, a man is no example for a
woman. It’s a different thing. I may degrade and defile myself, but I am
not anyone’s slave. I come and go, and that’s an end of it. I shake
it off, and I am a different man. But you are a slave from the start. Yes, a
slave! You give up everything, your whole freedom. If you want to break your
chains afterwards, you won’t be able to; you will be more and more fast
in the snares. It is an accursed bondage. I know it. I won’t speak of
anything else, maybe you won’t understand, but tell me: no doubt you are
in debt to your madam? There, you see,” I added, though she made no
answer, but only listened in silence, entirely absorbed, “that’s a
bondage for you! You will never buy your freedom. They will see to that.
It’s like selling your soul to the devil.... And besides ... perhaps, I
too, am just as unlucky—how do you know—and wallow in the mud on
purpose, out of misery? You know, men take to drink from grief; well, maybe I
am here from grief. Come, tell me, what is there good here? Here you and I ...
came together ... just now and did not say one word to one another all the
time, and it was only afterwards you began staring at me like a wild creature,
and I at you. Is that loving? Is that how one human being should meet another?
It’s hideous, that’s what it is!”
</p>
<p>
“Yes!” she assented sharply and hurriedly.
</p>
<p>
I was positively astounded by the promptitude of this “Yes.” So the
same thought may have been straying through her mind when she was staring at me
just before. So she, too, was capable of certain thoughts? “Damn it all,
this was interesting, this was a point of likeness!” I thought, almost
rubbing my hands. And indeed it’s easy to turn a young soul like that!
</p>
<p>
It was the exercise of my power that attracted me most.
</p>
<p>
She turned her head nearer to me, and it seemed to me in the darkness that she
propped herself on her arm. Perhaps she was scrutinising me. How I regretted
that I could not see her eyes. I heard her deep breathing.
</p>
<p>
“Why have you come here?” I asked her, with a note of authority
already in my voice.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I don’t know.”
</p>
<p>
“But how nice it would be to be living in your father’s house!
It’s warm and free; you have a home of your own.”
</p>
<p>
“But what if it’s worse than this?”
</p>
<p>
“I must take the right tone,” flashed through my mind. “I may
not get far with sentimentality.” But it was only a momentary thought. I
swear she really did interest me. Besides, I was exhausted and moody. And
cunning so easily goes hand-in-hand with feeling.
</p>
<p>
“Who denies it!” I hastened to answer. “Anything may happen.
I am convinced that someone has wronged you, and that you are more sinned
against than sinning. Of course, I know nothing of your story, but it’s
not likely a girl like you has come here of her own inclination....”
</p>
<p>
“A girl like me?” she whispered, hardly audibly; but I heard it.
</p>
<p>
Damn it all, I was flattering her. That was horrid. But perhaps it was a good
thing.... She was silent.
</p>
<p>
“See, Liza, I will tell you about myself. If I had had a home from
childhood, I shouldn’t be what I am now. I often think that. However bad
it may be at home, anyway they are your father and mother, and not enemies,
strangers. Once a year at least, they’ll show their love of you. Anyway,
you know you are at home. I grew up without a home; and perhaps that’s
why I’ve turned so ... unfeeling.”
</p>
<p>
I waited again. “Perhaps she doesn’t understand,” I thought,
“and, indeed, it is absurd—it’s moralising.”
</p>
<p>
“If I were a father and had a daughter, I believe I should love my
daughter more than my sons, really,” I began indirectly, as though
talking of something else, to distract her attention. I must confess I blushed.
</p>
<p>
“Why so?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
Ah! so she was listening!
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know, Liza. I knew a father who was a stern, austere man,
but used to go down on his knees to his daughter, used to kiss her hands, her
feet, he couldn’t make enough of her, really. When she danced at parties
he used to stand for five hours at a stretch, gazing at her. He was mad over
her: I understand that! She would fall asleep tired at night, and he would wake
to kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of the cross over her. He would go
about in a dirty old coat, he was stingy to everyone else, but would spend his
last penny for her, giving her expensive presents, and it was his greatest
delight when she was pleased with what he gave her. Fathers always love their
daughters more than the mothers do. Some girls live happily at home! And I
believe I should never let my daughters marry.”
</p>
<p>
“What next?” she said, with a faint smile.
</p>
<p>
“I should be jealous, I really should. To think that she should kiss
anyone else! That she should love a stranger more than her father! It’s
painful to imagine it. Of course, that’s all nonsense, of course every
father would be reasonable at last. But I believe before I should let her
marry, I should worry myself to death; I should find fault with all her
suitors. But I should end by letting her marry whom she herself loved. The one
whom the daughter loves always seems the worst to the father, you know. That is
always so. So many family troubles come from that.”
</p>
<p>
“Some are glad to sell their daughters, rather than marrying them
honourably.”
</p>
<p>
Ah, so that was it!
</p>
<p>
“Such a thing, Liza, happens in those accursed families in which there is
neither love nor God,” I retorted warmly, “and where there is no
love, there is no sense either. There are such families, it’s true, but I
am not speaking of them. You must have seen wickedness in your own family, if
you talk like that. Truly, you must have been unlucky. H’m! ... that sort
of thing mostly comes about through poverty.”
</p>
<p>
“And is it any better with the gentry? Even among the poor, honest people
who live happily?”
</p>
<p>
“H’m ... yes. Perhaps. Another thing, Liza, man is fond of
reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys. If he counted them up
as he ought, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
And what if all goes well with the family, if the blessing of God is upon it,
if the husband is a good one, loves you, cherishes you, never leaves you! There
is happiness in such a family! Even sometimes there is happiness in the midst
of sorrow; and indeed sorrow is everywhere. If you marry <i>you will find out
for yourself</i>. But think of the first years of married life with one you
love: what happiness, what happiness there sometimes is in it! And indeed
it’s the ordinary thing. In those early days even quarrels with
one’s husband end happily. Some women get up quarrels with their husbands
just because they love them. Indeed, I knew a woman like that: she seemed to
say that because she loved him, she would torment him and make him feel it. You
know that you may torment a man on purpose through love. Women are particularly
given to that, thinking to themselves ‘I will love him so, I will make so
much of him afterwards, that it’s no sin to torment him a little
now.’ And all in the house rejoice in the sight of you, and you are happy
and gay and peaceful and honourable.... Then there are some women who are
jealous. If he went off anywhere—I knew one such woman, she
couldn’t restrain herself, but would jump up at night and run off on the
sly to find out where he was, whether he was with some other woman.
That’s a pity. And the woman knows herself it’s wrong, and her
heart fails her and she suffers, but she loves—it’s all through
love. And how sweet it is to make up after quarrels, to own herself in the
wrong or to forgive him! And they both are so happy all at once—as though
they had met anew, been married over again; as though their love had begun
afresh. And no one, no one should know what passes between husband and wife if
they love one another. And whatever quarrels there may be between them they
ought not to call in their own mother to judge between them and tell tales of
one another. They are their own judges. Love is a holy mystery and ought to be
hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens. That makes it holier and better.
They respect one another more, and much is built on respect. And if once there
has been love, if they have been married for love, why should love pass away?
Surely one can keep it! It is rare that one cannot keep it. And if the husband
is kind and straightforward, why should not love last? The first phase of
married love will pass, it is true, but then there will come a love that is
better still. Then there will be the union of souls, they will have everything
in common, there will be no secrets between them. And once they have children,
the most difficult times will seem to them happy, so long as there is love and
courage. Even toil will be a joy, you may deny yourself bread for your children
and even that will be a joy, They will love you for it afterwards; so you are
laying by for your future. As the children grow up you feel that you are an
example, a support for them; that even after you die your children will always
keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have received them from you, they
will take on your semblance and likeness. So you see this is a great duty. How
can it fail to draw the father and mother nearer? People say it’s a trial
to have children. Who says that? It is heavenly happiness! Are you fond of
little children, Liza? I am awfully fond of them. You know—a little rosy
baby boy at your bosom, and what husband’s heart is not touched, seeing
his wife nursing his child! A plump little rosy baby, sprawling and snuggling,
chubby little hands and feet, clean tiny little nails, so tiny that it makes
one laugh to look at them; eyes that look as if they understand everything. And
while it sucks it clutches at your bosom with its little hand, plays. When its
father comes up, the child tears itself away from the bosom, flings itself
back, looks at its father, laughs, as though it were fearfully funny, and falls
to sucking again. Or it will bite its mother’s breast when its little
teeth are coming, while it looks sideways at her with its little eyes as though
to say, ‘Look, I am biting!’ Is not all that happiness when they
are the three together, husband, wife and child? One can forgive a great deal
for the sake of such moments. Yes, Liza, one must first learn to live oneself
before one blames others!”
</p>
<p>
“It’s by pictures, pictures like that one must get at you,” I
thought to myself, though I did speak with real feeling, and all at once I
flushed crimson. “What if she were suddenly to burst out laughing, what
should I do then?” That idea drove me to fury. Towards the end of my
speech I really was excited, and now my vanity was somehow wounded. The silence
continued. I almost nudged her.
</p>
<p>
“Why are you—” she began and stopped. But I understood: there
was a quiver of something different in her voice, not abrupt, harsh and
unyielding as before, but something soft and shamefaced, so shamefaced that I
suddenly felt ashamed and guilty.
</p>
<p>
“What?” I asked, with tender curiosity.
</p>
<p>
“Why, you...”
</p>
<p>
“What?”
</p>
<p>
“Why, you ... speak somehow like a book,” she said, and again there
was a note of irony in her voice.
</p>
<p>
That remark sent a pang to my heart. It was not what I was expecting.
</p>
<p>
I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that this is
usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of
their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that their pride makes them
refuse to surrender till the last moment and shrink from giving expression to
their feelings before you. I ought to have guessed the truth from the timidity
with which she had repeatedly approached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to
utter it at last with an effort. But I did not guess, and an evil feeling took
possession of me.
</p>
<p>
“Wait a bit!” I thought.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap18"></a>VII</h2>
<p>
“Oh, hush, Liza! How can you talk about being like a book, when it makes
even me, an outsider, feel sick? Though I don’t look at it as an
outsider, for, indeed, it touches me to the heart.... Is it possible, is it
possible that you do not feel sick at being here yourself? Evidently habit does
wonders! God knows what habit can do with anyone. Can you seriously think that
you will never grow old, that you will always be good-looking, and that they
will keep you here for ever and ever? I say nothing of the loathsomeness of the
life here.... Though let me tell you this about it—about your present
life, I mean; here though you are young now, attractive, nice, with soul and
feeling, yet you know as soon as I came to myself just now I felt at once sick
at being here with you! One can only come here when one is drunk. But if you
were anywhere else, living as good people live, I should perhaps be more than
attracted by you, should fall in love with you, should be glad of a look from
you, let alone a word; I should hang about your door, should go down on my
knees to you, should look upon you as my betrothed and think it an honour to be
allowed to. I should not dare to have an impure thought about you. But here,
you see, I know that I have only to whistle and you have to come with me
whether you like it or not. I don’t consult your wishes, but you mine.
The lowest labourer hires himself as a workman, but he doesn’t make a
slave of himself altogether; besides, he knows that he will be free again
presently. But when are you free? Only think what you are giving up here? What
is it you are making a slave of? It is your soul, together with your body; you
are selling your soul which you have no right to dispose of! You give your love
to be outraged by every drunkard! Love! But that’s everything, you know,
it’s a priceless diamond, it’s a maiden’s treasure,
love—why, a man would be ready to give his soul, to face death to gain
that love. But how much is your love worth now? You are sold, all of you, body
and soul, and there is no need to strive for love when you can have everything
without love. And you know there is no greater insult to a girl than that, do
you understand? To be sure, I have heard that they comfort you, poor fools,
they let you have lovers of your own here. But you know that’s simply a
farce, that’s simply a sham, it’s just laughing at you, and you are
taken in by it! Why, do you suppose he really loves you, that lover of yours? I
don’t believe it. How can he love you when he knows you may be called
away from him any minute? He would be a low fellow if he did! Will he have a
grain of respect for you? What have you in common with him? He laughs at you
and robs you—that is all his love amounts to! You are lucky if he does
not beat you. Very likely he does beat you, too. Ask him, if you have got one,
whether he will marry you. He will laugh in your face, if he doesn’t spit
in it or give you a blow—though maybe he is not worth a bad halfpenny
himself. And for what have you ruined your life, if you come to think of it?
For the coffee they give you to drink and the plentiful meals? But with what
object are they feeding you up? An honest girl couldn’t swallow the food,
for she would know what she was being fed for. You are in debt here, and, of
course, you will always be in debt, and you will go on in debt to the end, till
the visitors here begin to scorn you. And that will soon happen, don’t
rely upon your youth—all that flies by express train here, you know. You
will be kicked out. And not simply kicked out; long before that she’ll
begin nagging at you, scolding you, abusing you, as though you had not
sacrificed your health for her, had not thrown away your youth and your soul
for her benefit, but as though you had ruined her, beggared her, robbed her.
And don’t expect anyone to take your part: the others, your companions,
will attack you, too, win her favour, for all are in slavery here, and have
lost all conscience and pity here long ago. They have become utterly vile, and
nothing on earth is viler, more loathsome, and more insulting than their abuse.
And you are laying down everything here, unconditionally, youth and health and
beauty and hope, and at twenty-two you will look like a woman of
five-and-thirty, and you will be lucky if you are not diseased, pray to God for
that! No doubt you are thinking now that you have a gay time and no work to do!
Yet there is no work harder or more dreadful in the world or ever has been. One
would think that the heart alone would be worn out with tears. And you
won’t dare to say a word, not half a word when they drive you away from
here; you will go away as though you were to blame. You will change to another
house, then to a third, then somewhere else, till you come down at last to the
Haymarket. There you will be beaten at every turn; that is good manners there,
the visitors don’t know how to be friendly without beating you. You
don’t believe that it is so hateful there? Go and look for yourself some
time, you can see with your own eyes. Once, one New Year’s Day, I saw a
woman at a door. They had turned her out as a joke, to give her a taste of the
frost because she had been crying so much, and they shut the door behind her.
At nine o’clock in the morning she was already quite drunk, dishevelled,
half-naked, covered with bruises, her face was powdered, but she had a
black-eye, blood was trickling from her nose and her teeth; some cabman had
just given her a drubbing. She was sitting on the stone steps, a salt fish of
some sort was in her hand; she was crying, wailing something about her luck and
beating with the fish on the steps, and cabmen and drunken soldiers were
crowding in the doorway taunting her. You don’t believe that you will
ever be like that? I should be sorry to believe it, too, but how do you know;
maybe ten years, eight years ago that very woman with the salt fish came here
fresh as a cherub, innocent, pure, knowing no evil, blushing at every word.
Perhaps she was like you, proud, ready to take offence, not like the others;
perhaps she looked like a queen, and knew what happiness was in store for the
man who should love her and whom she should love. Do you see how it ended? And
what if at that very minute when she was beating on the filthy steps with that
fish, drunken and dishevelled—what if at that very minute she recalled
the pure early days in her father’s house, when she used to go to school
and the neighbour’s son watched for her on the way, declaring that he
would love her as long as he lived, that he would devote his life to her, and
when they vowed to love one another for ever and be married as soon as they
were grown up! No, Liza, it would be happy for you if you were to die soon of
consumption in some corner, in some cellar like that woman just now. In the
hospital, do you say? You will be lucky if they take you, but what if you are
still of use to the madam here? Consumption is a queer disease, it is not like
fever. The patient goes on hoping till the last minute and says he is all
right. He deludes himself And that just suits your madam. Don’t doubt it,
that’s how it is; you have sold your soul, and what is more you owe
money, so you daren’t say a word. But when you are dying, all will
abandon you, all will turn away from you, for then there will be nothing to get
from you. What’s more, they will reproach you for cumbering the place,
for being so long over dying. However you beg you won’t get a drink of
water without abuse: ‘Whenever are you going off, you nasty hussy, you
won’t let us sleep with your moaning, you make the gentlemen sick.’
That’s true, I have heard such things said myself. They will thrust you
dying into the filthiest corner in the cellar—in the damp and darkness;
what will your thoughts be, lying there alone? When you die, strange hands will
lay you out, with grumbling and impatience; no one will bless you, no one will
sigh for you, they only want to get rid of you as soon as may be; they will buy
a coffin, take you to the grave as they did that poor woman today, and
celebrate your memory at the tavern. In the grave, sleet, filth, wet
snow—no need to put themselves out for you—‘Let her down,
Vanuha; it’s just like her luck—even here, she is head-foremost,
the hussy. Shorten the cord, you rascal.’ ‘It’s all right as
it is.’ ‘All right, is it? Why, she’s on her side! She was a
fellow-creature, after all! But, never mind, throw the earth on her.’ And
they won’t care to waste much time quarrelling over you. They will
scatter the wet blue clay as quick as they can and go off to the tavern ... and
there your memory on earth will end; other women have children to go to their
graves, fathers, husbands. While for you neither tear, nor sigh, nor
remembrance; no one in the whole world will ever come to you, your name will
vanish from the face of the earth—as though you had never existed, never
been born at all! Nothing but filth and mud, however you knock at your coffin
lid at night, when the dead arise, however you cry: ‘Let me out, kind
people, to live in the light of day! My life was no life at all; my life has
been thrown away like a dish-clout; it was drunk away in the tavern at the
Haymarket; let me out, kind people, to live in the world again.’”
</p>
<p>
And I worked myself up to such a pitch that I began to have a lump in my throat
myself, and ... and all at once I stopped, sat up in dismay and, bending over
apprehensively, began to listen with a beating heart. I had reason to be
troubled.
</p>
<p>
I had felt for some time that I was turning her soul upside down and rending
her heart, and—and the more I was convinced of it, the more eagerly I
desired to gain my object as quickly and as effectually as possible. It was the
exercise of my skill that carried me away; yet it was not merely sport....
</p>
<p>
I knew I was speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly, in fact, I could
not speak except “like a book.” But that did not trouble me: I
knew, I felt that I should be understood and that this very bookishness might
be an assistance. But now, having attained my effect, I was suddenly
panic-stricken. Never before had I witnessed such despair! She was lying on her
face, thrusting her face into the pillow and clutching it in both hands. Her
heart was being torn. Her youthful body was shuddering all over as though in
convulsions. Suppressed sobs rent her bosom and suddenly burst out in weeping
and wailing, then she pressed closer into the pillow: she did not want anyone
here, not a living soul, to know of her anguish and her tears. She bit the
pillow, bit her hand till it bled (I saw that afterwards), or, thrusting her
fingers into her dishevelled hair, seemed rigid with the effort of restraint,
holding her breath and clenching her teeth. I began saying something, begging
her to calm herself, but felt that I did not dare; and all at once, in a sort
of cold shiver, almost in terror, began fumbling in the dark, trying hurriedly
to get dressed to go. It was dark; though I tried my best I could not finish
dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a box of matches and a candlestick with a
whole candle in it. As soon as the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up
in bed, and with a contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me
almost senselessly. I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came to
herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold of me,
but did not dare, and slowly bowed her head before me.
</p>
<p>
“Liza, my dear, I was wrong ... forgive me, my dear,” I began, but
she squeezed my hand in her fingers so tightly that I felt I was saying the
wrong thing and stopped.
</p>
<p>
“This is my address, Liza, come to me.”
</p>
<p>
“I will come,” she answered resolutely, her head still bowed.
</p>
<p>
“But now I am going, good-bye ... till we meet again.”
</p>
<p>
I got up; she, too, stood up and suddenly flushed all over, gave a shudder,
snatched up a shawl that was lying on a chair and muffled herself in it to her
chin. As she did this she gave another sickly smile, blushed and looked at me
strangely. I felt wretched; I was in haste to get away—to disappear.
</p>
<p>
“Wait a minute,” she said suddenly, in the passage just at the
doorway, stopping me with her hand on my overcoat. She put down the candle in
hot haste and ran off; evidently she had thought of something or wanted to show
me something. As she ran away she flushed, her eyes shone, and there was a
smile on her lips—what was the meaning of it? Against my will I waited:
she came back a minute later with an expression that seemed to ask forgiveness
for something. In fact, it was not the same face, not the same look as the
evening before: sullen, mistrustful and obstinate. Her eyes now were imploring,
soft, and at the same time trustful, caressing, timid. The expression with
which children look at people they are very fond of, of whom they are asking a
favour. Her eyes were a light hazel, they were lovely eyes, full of life, and
capable of expressing love as well as sullen hatred.
</p>
<p>
Making no explanation, as though I, as a sort of higher being, must understand
everything without explanations, she held out a piece of paper to me. Her whole
face was positively beaming at that instant with naive, almost childish,
triumph. I unfolded it. It was a letter to her from a medical student or
someone of that sort—a very high-flown and flowery, but extremely
respectful, love-letter. I don’t recall the words now, but I remember
well that through the high-flown phrases there was apparent a genuine feeling,
which cannot be feigned. When I had finished reading it I met her glowing,
questioning, and childishly impatient eyes fixed upon me. She fastened her eyes
upon my face and waited impatiently for what I should say. In a few words,
hurriedly, but with a sort of joy and pride, she explained to me that she had
been to a dance somewhere in a private house, a family of “very nice
people, <i>who knew nothing</i>, absolutely nothing, for she had only come here
so lately and it had all happened ... and she hadn’t made up her mind to
stay and was certainly going away as soon as she had paid her debt...”
and at that party there had been the student who had danced with her all the
evening. He had talked to her, and it turned out that he had known her in old
days at Riga when he was a child, they had played together, but a very long
time ago—and he knew her parents, but <i>about this</i> he knew nothing,
nothing whatever, and had no suspicion! And the day after the dance (three days
ago) he had sent her that letter through the friend with whom she had gone to
the party ... and ... well, that was all.
</p>
<p>
She dropped her shining eyes with a sort of bashfulness as she finished.
</p>
<p>
The poor girl was keeping that student’s letter as a precious treasure,
and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go
away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she,
too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in
her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would
keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification,
and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with
naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might
think well of her. I said nothing, pressed her hand and went out. I so longed
to get away ... I walked all the way home, in spite of the fact that the
melting snow was still falling in heavy flakes. I was exhausted, shattered, in
bewilderment. But behind the bewilderment the truth was already gleaming. The
loathsome truth.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap19"></a>VIII</h2>
<p>
It was some time, however, before I consented to recognise that truth. Waking
up in the morning after some hours of heavy, leaden sleep, and immediately
realising all that had happened on the previous day, I was positively amazed at
my last night’s <i>sentimentality</i> with Liza, at all those
“outcries of horror and pity.” “To think of having such an
attack of womanish hysteria, pah!” I concluded. And what did I thrust my
address upon her for? What if she comes? Let her come, though; it doesn’t
matter.... But <i>obviously</i>, that was not now the chief and the most
important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my reputation in
the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible; that was the chief
business. And I was so taken up that morning that I actually forgot all about
Liza.
</p>
<p>
First of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before from
Simonov. I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen roubles straight
off from Anton Antonitch. As luck would have it he was in the best of humours
that morning, and gave it to me at once, on the first asking. I was so
delighted at this that, as I signed the IOU with a swaggering air, I told him
casually that the night before “I had been keeping it up with some
friends at the Hôtel de Paris; we were giving a farewell party to a comrade, in
fact, I might say a friend of my childhood, and you know—a desperate
rake, fearfully spoilt—of course, he belongs to a good family, and has
considerable means, a brilliant career; he is witty, charming, a regular
Lovelace, you understand; we drank an extra ‘half-dozen’ and
...”
</p>
<p>
And it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily, unconstrainedly
and complacently.
</p>
<p>
On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.
</p>
<p>
To this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly gentlemanly,
good-humoured, candid tone of my letter. With tact and good-breeding, and,
above all, entirely without superfluous words, I blamed myself for all that had
happened. I defended myself, “if I really may be allowed to defend
myself,” by alleging that being utterly unaccustomed to wine, I had been
intoxicated with the first glass, which I said, I had drunk before they
arrived, while I was waiting for them at the Hôtel de Paris between five and
six o’clock. I begged Simonov’s pardon especially; I asked him to
convey my explanations to all the others, especially to Zverkov, whom “I
seemed to remember as though in a dream” I had insulted. I added that I
would have called upon all of them myself, but my head ached, and besides I had
not the face to. I was particularly pleased with a certain lightness, almost
carelessness (strictly within the bounds of politeness, however), which was
apparent in my style, and better than any possible arguments, gave them at once
to understand that I took rather an independent view of “all that
unpleasantness last night”; that I was by no means so utterly crushed as
you, my friends, probably imagine; but on the contrary, looked upon it as a
gentleman serenely respecting himself should look upon it. “On a young
hero’s past no censure is cast!”
</p>
<p>
“There is actually an aristocratic playfulness about it!” I thought
admiringly, as I read over the letter. “And it’s all because I am
an intellectual and cultivated man! Another man in my place would not have
known how to extricate himself, but here I have got out of it and am as jolly
as ever again, and all because I am ‘a cultivated and educated man of our
day.’ And, indeed, perhaps, everything was due to the wine yesterday.
H’m!” ... No, it was not the wine. I did not drink anything at all
between five and six when I was waiting for them. I had lied to Simonov; I had
lied shamelessly; and indeed I wasn’t ashamed now.... Hang it all though,
the great thing was that I was rid of it.
</p>
<p>
I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to take it to
Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter, Apollon became
more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I went out for a walk.
My head was still aching and giddy after yesterday. But as evening came on and
the twilight grew denser, my impressions and, following them, my thoughts, grew
more and more different and confused. Something was not dead within me, in the
depths of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in
acute depression. For the most part I jostled my way through the most crowded
business streets, along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy Street and in
Yusupov Garden. I always liked particularly sauntering along these streets in
the dusk, just when there were crowds of working people of all sorts going home
from their daily work, with faces looking cross with anxiety. What I liked was
just that cheap bustle, that bare prose. On this occasion the jostling of the
streets irritated me more than ever, I could not make out what was wrong with
me, I could not find the clue, something seemed rising up continually in my
soul, painfully, and refusing to be appeased. I returned home completely upset,
it was just as though some crime were lying on my conscience.
</p>
<p>
The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed queer to me
that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented me, as it were,
especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything else I had quite succeeded
in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it all and was still perfectly
satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on this point I was not satisfied at
all. It was as though I were worried only by Liza. “What if she
comes,” I thought incessantly, “well, it doesn’t matter, let
her come! H’m! it’s horrid that she should see, for instance, how I
live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero to her, while now, h’m! It’s
horrid, though, that I have let myself go so, the room looks like a
beggar’s. And I brought myself to go out to dinner in such a suit! And my
American leather sofa with the stuffing sticking out. And my dressing-gown,
which will not cover me, such tatters, and she will see all this and she will
see Apollon. That beast is certain to insult her. He will fasten upon her in
order to be rude to me. And I, of course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I
shall begin bowing and scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round
me, I shall begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it
isn’t the beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more
important, more loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest
lying mask again! ...”
</p>
<p>
When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.
</p>
<p>
“Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night. I
remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to excite an
honourable feeling in her.... Her crying was a good thing, it will have a good
effect.”
</p>
<p>
Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come back home,
even after nine o’clock, when I calculated that Liza could not possibly
come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came back to my mind always
in the same position. One moment out of all that had happened last night stood
vividly before my imagination; the moment when I struck a match and saw her
pale, distorted face, with its look of torture. And what a pitiful, what an
unnatural, what a distorted smile she had at that moment! But I did not know
then, that fifteen years later I should still in my imagination see Liza,
always with the pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face
at that minute.
</p>
<p>
Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to over-excited
nerves, and, above all, as <i>exaggerated</i>. I was always conscious of that
weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of it. “I exaggerate
everything, that is where I go wrong,” I repeated to myself every hour.
But, however, “Liza will very likely come all the same,” was the
refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so uneasy that I sometimes
flew into a fury: “She’ll come, she is certain to come!” I
cried, running about the room, “if not today, she will come tomorrow;
she’ll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure hearts! Oh,
the vileness—oh, the silliness—oh, the stupidity of these
‘wretched sentimental souls!’ Why, how fail to understand? How
could one fail to understand? ...”
</p>
<p>
But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.
</p>
<p>
And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how little of
the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) had sufficed
to turn a whole human life at once according to my will. That’s
virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!
</p>
<p>
At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, “to tell her all,”
and beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me that I
believed I should have crushed that “damned” Liza if she had
chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have spat at
her, have turned her out, have struck her!
</p>
<p>
One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I began to
grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine o’clock, I
even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for instance, became the
salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me and my talking to her.... I
develop her, educate her. Finally, I notice that she loves me, loves me
passionately. I pretend not to understand (I don’t know, however, why I
pretend, just for effect, perhaps). At last all confusion, transfigured,
trembling and sobbing, she flings herself at my feet and says that I am her
saviour, and that she loves me better than anything in the world. I am amazed,
but.... “Liza,” I say, “can you imagine that I have not
noticed your love? I saw it all, I divined it, but I did not dare to approach
you first, because I had an influence over you and was afraid that you would
force yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in
your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ...
because it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off
at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George Sand),
but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure, you are good, you
are my noble wife.
</p>
<p class="poem">
‘Into my house come bold and free,<br/>
Its rightful mistress there to be’.”
</p>
<p>
Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In fact, in the
end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out my tongue at myself.
</p>
<p>
Besides, they won’t let her out, “the hussy!” I thought. They
don’t let them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some
reason I fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o’clock
precisely). Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there yet, and
had certain rights; so, h’m! Damn it all, she will come, she is sure to
come!
</p>
<p>
It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at that time
by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was the bane of my life,
the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been squabbling continually for
years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated him! I believe I had never hated
anyone in my life as I hated him, especially at some moments. He was an
elderly, dignified man, who worked part of his time as a tailor. But for some
unknown reason he despised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me
insufferably. Though, indeed, he looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at
that flaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his
forehead and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth, compressed into
the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was confronting a man who never
doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to the most extreme point, the greatest
pedant I had met on earth, and with that had a vanity only befitting Alexander
of Macedon. He was in love with every button on his coat, every nail on his
fingers—absolutely in love with them, and he looked it! In his behaviour
to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me, and if he chanced to
glance at me he gave me a firm, majestically self-confident and invariably
ironical look that drove me sometimes to fury. He did his work with the air of
doing me the greatest favour, though he did scarcely anything for me, and did
not, indeed, consider himself bound to do anything. There could be no doubt
that he looked upon me as the greatest fool on earth, and that “he did
not get rid of me” was simply that he could get wages from me every
month. He consented to do nothing for me for seven roubles a month. Many sins
should be forgiven me for what I suffered from him. My hatred reached such a
point that sometimes his very step almost threw me into convulsions. What I
loathed particularly was his lisp. His tongue must have been a little too long
or something of that sort, for he continually lisped, and seemed to be very
proud of it, imagining that it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a
slow, measured tone, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the
ground. He maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself
behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading! But he was
awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even, sing-song
voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that that is how he has
ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the dead, and at the same
time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at that time I could not get rid of
him, it was as though he were chemically combined with my existence. Besides,
nothing would have induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in
furnished lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in
which I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me, for some
reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I could not turn him
away.
</p>
<p>
To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was impossible. He
would have made such a fuss, I should not have known where to hide my head. But
I was so exasperated with everyone during those days, that I made up my mind
for some reason and with some object to <i>punish</i> Apollon and not to pay
him for a fortnight the wages that were owing him. I had for a long
time—for the last two years—been intending to do this, simply in
order to teach him not to give himself airs with me, and to show him that if I
liked I could withhold his wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it,
and was purposely silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him
to be the first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out
of a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I
won’t, I won’t, I simply won’t pay him his wages, I
won’t just because that is “what I wish,” because “I am
master, and it is for me to decide,” because he has been disrespectful,
because he has been rude; but if he were to ask respectfully I might be
softened and give it to him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another
three weeks, a whole month....
</p>
<p>
But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out for four
days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there had been such
cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be observed I knew all this
beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by heart). He would begin by fixing upon
me an exceedingly severe stare, keeping it up for several minutes at a time,
particularly on meeting me or seeing me out of the house. If I held out and
pretended not to notice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to
further tortures. All at once, <i>à propos</i> of nothing, he would walk softly
and smoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand at
the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other, and fix upon
me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what
he wanted, he would make me no answer, but continue staring at me persistently
for some seconds, then, with a peculiar compression of his lips and a most
significant air, deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room.
Two hours later he would come out again and again present himself before me in
the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask him what he
wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously and began staring
back at him. So we stared at one another for two minutes; at last he turned
with deliberation and dignity and went back again for two hours.
</p>
<p>
If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my revolt,
he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long, deep sighs as
though measuring by them the depths of my moral degradation, and, of course, it
ended at last by his triumphing completely: I raged and shouted, but still was
forced to do what he wanted.
</p>
<p>
This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost my temper
and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance apart from him.
</p>
<p>
“Stay,” I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently
turning, with one hand behind his back, to go to his room. “Stay! Come
back, come back, I tell you!” and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that
he turned round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he persisted
in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.
</p>
<p>
“How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?
Answer!”
</p>
<p>
After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round again.
</p>
<p>
“Stay!” I roared, running up to him, “don’t stir!
There. Answer, now: what did you come in to look at?”
</p>
<p>
“If you have any order to give me it’s my duty to carry it
out,” he answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured
lisp, raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to
another, all this with exasperating composure.
</p>
<p>
“That’s not what I am asking you about, you torturer!” I
shouted, turning crimson with anger. “I’ll tell you why you came
here myself: you see, I don’t give you your wages, you are so proud you
don’t want to bow down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with
your stupid stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it
is—stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! ...”
</p>
<p>
He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.
</p>
<p>
“Listen,” I shouted to him. “Here’s the money, do you
see, here it is,” (I took it out of the table drawer);
“here’s the seven roubles complete, but you are not going to have
it, you ... are ... not ... going ... to ... have it until you come
respectfully with bowed head to beg my pardon. Do you hear?”
</p>
<p>
“That cannot be,” he answered, with the most unnatural
self-confidence.
</p>
<p>
“It shall be so,” I said, “I give you my word of honour, it
shall be!”
</p>
<p>
“And there’s nothing for me to beg your pardon for,” he went
on, as though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. “Why, besides,
you called me a ‘torturer,’ for which I can summon you at the
police-station at any time for insulting behaviour.”
</p>
<p>
“Go, summon me,” I roared, “go at once, this very minute,
this very second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!”
</p>
<p>
But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud calls to
him, he walked to his room with an even step and without looking round.
</p>
<p>
“If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened,”
I decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind his
screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating slowly and
violently.
</p>
<p>
“Apollon,” I said quietly and emphatically, though I was
breathless, “go at once without a minute’s delay and fetch the
police-officer.”
</p>
<p>
He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles and taken
up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a guffaw.
</p>
<p>
“At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can’t imagine what
will happen.”
</p>
<p>
“You are certainly out of your mind,” he observed, without even
raising his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.
“Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as
for being frightened—you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for
nothing will come of it.”
</p>
<p>
“Go!” I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should
strike him in a minute.
</p>
<p>
But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open at that
instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at us in perplexity
I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back to my room. There,
clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my head against the wall and
stood motionless in that position.
</p>
<p>
Two minutes later I heard Apollon’s deliberate footsteps. “There is
some woman asking for you,” he said, looking at me with peculiar
severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away, but stared
at us sarcastically.
</p>
<p>
“Go away, go away,” I commanded in desperation. At that moment my
clock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap20"></a>IX</h2>
<p class="poem">
“Into my house come bold and free,<br/>
Its rightful mistress there to be.”
</p>
<p>
I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I believe I
smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my ragged wadded
dressing-gown—exactly as I had imagined the scene not long before in a
fit of depression. After standing over us for a couple of minutes Apollon went
away, but that did not make me more at ease. What made it worse was that she,
too, was overwhelmed with confusion, more so, in fact, than I should have
expected. At the sight of me, of course.
</p>
<p>
“Sit down,” I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table,
and I sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me
open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naïveté of
expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.
</p>
<p>
She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as usual,
while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should make her pay
dearly for <i>all this</i>.
</p>
<p>
“You have found me in a strange position, Liza,” I began,
stammering and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. “No, no,
don’t imagine anything,” I cried, seeing that she had suddenly
flushed. “I am not ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary, I look with
pride on my poverty. I am poor but honourable.... One can be poor and
honourable,” I muttered. “However ... would you like
tea?....”
</p>
<p>
“No,” she was beginning.
</p>
<p>
“Wait a minute.”
</p>
<p>
I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.
</p>
<p>
“Apollon,” I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him
the seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,
“here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must
come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant. If you
won’t go, you’ll make me a miserable man! You don’t know what
this woman is.... This is—everything! You may be imagining something....
But you don’t know what that woman is! ...”
</p>
<p>
Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles again,
at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or putting down his
needle; then, without paying the slightest attention to me or making any
answer, he went on busying himself with his needle, which he had not yet
threaded. I waited before him for three minutes with my arms crossed <i>à la
Napoléon</i>. My temples were moist with sweat. I was pale, I felt it. But,
thank God, he must have been moved to pity, looking at me. Having threaded his
needle he deliberately got up from his seat, deliberately moved back his chair,
deliberately took off his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and
finally asking me over his shoulder: “Shall I get a whole portion?”
deliberately walked out of the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought
occurred to me on the way: shouldn’t I run away just as I was in my
dressing-gown, no matter where, and then let happen what would?
</p>
<p>
I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were silent.
</p>
<p>
“I will kill him,” I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my
fist so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.
</p>
<p>
“What are you saying!” she cried, starting.
</p>
<p>
“I will kill him! kill him!” I shrieked, suddenly striking the
table in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid
it was to be in such a frenzy. “You don’t know, Liza, what that
torturer is to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetch some rusks;
he ...”
</p>
<p>
And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How ashamed I
felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain them.
</p>
<p>
She was frightened.
</p>
<p>
“What is the matter? What is wrong?” she cried, fussing about me.
</p>
<p>
“Water, give me water, over there!” I muttered in a faint voice,
though I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without
water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what is called,
<i>putting it on</i>, to save appearances, though the attack was a genuine one.
</p>
<p>
She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment Apollon
brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this commonplace, prosaic tea
was horribly undignified and paltry after all that had happened, and I blushed
crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with positive alarm. He went out without a
glance at either of us.
</p>
<p>
“Liza, do you despise me?” I asked, looking at her fixedly,
trembling with impatience to know what she was thinking.
</p>
<p>
She was confused, and did not know what to answer.
</p>
<p>
“Drink your tea,” I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself,
but, of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite
against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have killed her.
To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a word to her all the
time. “She is the cause of it all,” I thought.
</p>
<p>
Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we did not
touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from beginning in
order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to begin alone. Several
times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity. I was obstinately silent. I
was, of course, myself the chief sufferer, because I was fully conscious of the
disgusting meanness of my spiteful stupidity, and yet at the same time I could
not restrain myself.
</p>
<p>
“I want to... get away ... from there altogether,” she began, to
break the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought not
to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as I was. My
heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and unnecessary
straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled all compassion in
me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not care what happened. Another
five minutes passed.
</p>
<p>
“Perhaps I am in your way,” she began timidly, hardly audibly, and
was getting up.
</p>
<p>
But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively
trembled with spite, and at once burst out.
</p>
<p>
“Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?” I began, gasping
for breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed to have
it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to begin.
“Why have you come? Answer, answer,” I cried, hardly knowing what I
was doing. “I’ll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.
You’ve come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you
are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may as well
know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you now. Why are you
shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been insulted just before, at
dinner, by the fellows who came that evening before me. I came to you, meaning
to thrash one of them, an officer; but I didn’t succeed, I didn’t
find him; I had to avenge the insult on someone to get back my own again; you
turned up, I vented my spleen on you and laughed at you. I had been humiliated,
so I wanted to humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my
power.... That’s what it was, and you imagined I had come there on
purpose to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?”
</p>
<p>
I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in exactly, but I
knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very well indeed. And so,
indeed, she did. She turned white as a handkerchief, tried to say something,
and her lips worked painfully; but she sank on a chair as though she had been
felled by an axe. And all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips
parted and her eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, the
cynicism of my words overwhelmed her....
</p>
<p>
“Save you!” I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and
down the room before her. “Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse
than you myself. Why didn’t you throw it in my teeth when I was giving
you that sermon: ‘But what did you come here yourself for? was it to read
us a sermon?’ Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I
wanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your
hysteria—that was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn’t keep it
up then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the devil
knows why, gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I got home, I
was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already
because of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words,
only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go
to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I’d sell the whole world
for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to
go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for
me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I
know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I have
been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your coming. And do
you know what has worried me particularly for these three days? That I posed as
such a hero to you, and now you would see me in a wretched torn dressing-gown,
beggarly, loathsome. I told you just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty;
so you may as well know that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than
of anything, more afraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief,
because I am as vain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on
me hurt. Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for
having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at Apollon
like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying like a mangy,
unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was jeering at him! And I shall
never forgive you for the tears I could not help shedding before you just now,
like some silly woman put to shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I
shall never forgive you either! Yes—you must answer for it all because
you turned up like this, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest,
stupidest, absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a
bit better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;
while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! And what is
it to me that you don’t understand a word of this! And what do I care,
what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or not? Do you
understand? How I shall hate you now after saying this, for having been here
and listening. Why, it’s not once in a lifetime a man speaks out like
this, and then it is in hysterics! ... What more do you want? Why do you still
stand confronting me, after all this? Why are you worrying me? Why don’t
you go?”
</p>
<p>
But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed to think and
imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in the world to myself
just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand, that I could not all at once
take in this strange circumstance. What happened was this: Liza, insulted and
crushed by me, understood a great deal more than I imagined. She understood
from all this what a woman understands first of all, if she feels genuine love,
that is, that I was myself unhappy.
</p>
<p>
The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by a look
of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling myself a scoundrel and a
blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was accompanied throughout by tears)
her whole face worked convulsively. She was on the point of getting up and
stopping me; when I finished she took no notice of my shouting: “Why are
you here, why don’t you go away?” but realised only that it must
have been very bitter to me to say all this. Besides, she was so crushed, poor
girl; she considered herself infinitely beneath me; how could she feel anger or
resentment? She suddenly leapt up from her chair with an irresistible impulse
and held out her hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and not daring
to stir.... At this point there was a revulsion in my heart too. Then she
suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst into tears. I, too,
could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I never had before.
</p>
<p>
“They won’t let me ... I can’t be good!” I managed to
articulate; then I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on
it for a quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her
arms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the trouble was that
the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the loathsome truth)
lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust into my nasty leather
pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a far-away, involuntary but
irresistible feeling that it would be awkward now for me to raise my head and
look Liza straight in the face. Why was I ashamed? I don’t know, but I
was ashamed. The thought, too, came into my overwrought brain that our parts
now were completely changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a
crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night—four
days before.... And all this came into my mind during the minutes I was lying
on my face on the sofa.
</p>
<p>
My God! surely I was not envious of her then.
</p>
<p>
I don’t know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course, I
was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I cannot get on
without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ... there is no
explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.
</p>
<p>
I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner or later
... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I was ashamed to
look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled and flamed up in my heart
... a feeling of mastery and possession. My eyes gleamed with passion, and I
gripped her hands tightly. How I hated her and how I was drawn to her at that
minute! The one feeling intensified the other. It was almost like an act of
vengeance. At first there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face,
but only for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap21"></a>X</h2>
<p>
A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in frenzied
impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and peeped through
the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground with her head leaning against
the bed, and must have been crying. But she did not go away, and that irritated
me. This time she understood it all. I had insulted her finally, but ...
there’s no need to describe it. She realised that my outburst of passion
had been simply revenge, a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost
causeless hatred was added now a <i>personal hatred</i>, born of envy....
Though I do not maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly;
but she certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what
was worse, incapable of loving her.
</p>
<p>
I know I shall be told that this is incredible—but it is incredible to be
as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange I should
not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it strange? In the
first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving
meant tyrannising and showing my moral superiority. I have never in my life
been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have nowadays come to the
point of sometimes thinking that love really consists in the right—freely
given by the beloved object—to tyrannise over her.
</p>
<p>
Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a struggle. I
began it always with hatred and ended it with moral subjugation, and afterwards
I never knew what to do with the subjugated object. And what is there to wonder
at in that, since I had succeeded in so corrupting myself, since I was so out
of touch with “real life,” as to have actually thought of
reproaching her, and putting her to shame for having come to me to hear
“fine sentiments”; and did not even guess that she had come not to
hear fine sentiments, but to love me, because to a woman all reformation, all
salvation from any sort of ruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and
can only show itself in that form.
</p>
<p>
I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room and
peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably oppressed by
her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted “peace,” to be
left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressed me with its novelty so
much that I could hardly breathe.
</p>
<p>
But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as though
she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at the screen as
though to remind her.... She started, sprang up, and flew to seek her kerchief,
her hat, her coat, as though making her escape from me.... Two minutes later
she came from behind the screen and looked with heavy eyes at me. I gave a
spiteful grin, which was forced, however, to <i>keep up appearances</i>, and I
turned away from her eyes.
</p>
<p>
“Good-bye,” she said, going towards the door.
</p>
<p>
I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and closed
it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the other corner of
the room to avoid seeing, anyway....
</p>
<p>
I did mean a moment since to tell a lie—to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through losing
my head. But I don’t want to lie, and so I will say straight out that I
opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite. It came into my head to
do this while I was running up and down the room and she was sitting behind the
screen. But this I can say for certain: though I did that cruel thing
purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart, but came from my evil brain.
This cruelty was so affected, so purposely made up, so completely a product of
the brain, of books, that I could not even keep it up a minute—first I
dashed away to avoid seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after
Liza. I opened the door in the passage and began listening.
</p>
<p>
“Liza! Liza!” I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not
boldly. There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
the stairs.
</p>
<p>
“Liza!” I cried, more loudly.
</p>
<p>
No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open heavily
with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.
</p>
<p>
She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly oppressed.
</p>
<p>
I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and looked
aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started; straight before me on
the table I saw.... In short, I saw a crumpled blue five-rouble note, the one I
had thrust into her hand a minute before. It was the same note; it could be no
other, there was no other in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her
hand on the table at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.
</p>
<p>
Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have expected it?
No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for my fellow-creatures
that I could not even imagine she would do so. I could not endure it. A minute
later I flew like a madman to dress, flinging on what I could at random and ran
headlong after her. She could not have got two hundred paces away when I ran
out into the street.
</p>
<p>
It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling almost
perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as though with a
pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to be heard. The street
lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I ran two hundred paces to the
cross-roads and stopped short.
</p>
<p>
Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?
</p>
<p>
Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet, to entreat
her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast was being rent to pieces,
and never, never shall I recall that minute with indifference. But—what
for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate her, perhaps, even tomorrow, just
because I had kissed her feet today? Should I give her happiness? Had I not
recognised that day, for the hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not
torture her?
</p>
<p>
I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered this.
</p>
<p>
“And will it not be better?” I mused fantastically, afterwards at
home, stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. “Will
it not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for ever?
Resentment—why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful
consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and have exhausted her
heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in her heart, and however
loathsome the filth awaiting her—the feeling of insult will elevate and
purify her ... by hatred ... h’m! ... perhaps, too, by forgiveness....
Will all that make things easier for her though? ...”
</p>
<p>
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is
better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
</p>
<p>
So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain in my
soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could there have been
the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that I should turn back
half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard nothing of her. I will add,
too, that I remained for a long time afterwards pleased with the phrase about
the benefit from resentment and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell
ill from misery.
</p>
<hr />
<p>
Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have
many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my
“Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write
them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this
story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why,
to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally
rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from
real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be
interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are
<i>expressly</i> gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces
an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all
cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we
feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be
reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an
effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better
in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask
for something else? We don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse
for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us,
for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of
our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be
begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be
angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for
yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and
don’t dare to say all of us—excuse me, gentlemen, I am not
justifying myself with that “all of us.” As for what concerns me in
particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared
to carry halfway, and what’s more, you have taken your cowardice for good
sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after
all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we
don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called?
Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We
shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to
hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being
men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we
think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible
generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten,
not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a
taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But
enough; I don’t want to write more from “Underground.”
</p>
<p class="footnote">
[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain
from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here.]
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
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