Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Underground PART I
*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.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.
One. 1.
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!
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!)
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.
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.
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....
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 ...
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.
But what can a decent man speak of with most
pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
Well, so I will talk about myself.
II
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?
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.
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....
I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR
PROPRE. 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.
III
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.)
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 L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET
DE LA VERITE. The base and nasty desire to
vent that spite on its assailant rankles perhaps
even more nastily in it than in L'HOMME DE
LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. 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 ...
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
IV
"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment
in toothache next," you cry, with a laugh.
"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?
V
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 ENNUI,
gentlemen, all from ENNUI; 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?
VI
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 AS YOU WILL: at once
I drink to the health of "anyone you will"
because I love all that is "sublime and beautiful."
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.
VII
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, CONSCIOUSLY, 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, SOMETIMES,
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 INTENTIONAL
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.
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, A PROPOS 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
POSITIVELY OUGHT (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 INDEPENDENT
choice, whatever that independence may cost
and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course,
the devil only knows what choice.
VIII
"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--"
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?
"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 SENSELESS
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 FREEDOM 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...."
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?
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.
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!
IX
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 DESIRABLE to reform man in that
way? And what leads you to the conclusion
that man's inclinations NEED 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, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason
why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent
may just be that he is PREDESTINED 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 SOMEWHERE, 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 LES
ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--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.
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.
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.
X
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
XI
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!
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.
"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?"
"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!"
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....
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.
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
...
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.
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?
Well, there it is, I answer.
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?
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?
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.
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 A PROPOS of
the falling snow.
PART II
A Propos of the Wet Snow
When from dark error's subjugation
My words of passionate exhortation
Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;
And writhing prone in thine affliction
Thou didst recall with malediction
The vice that had encompassed thee:
And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting
By recollection's torturing flame,
Thou didst reveal the hideous setting
Of thy life's current ere I came:
When suddenly I saw thee sicken,
And weeping, hide thine anguished face,
Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,
At memories of foul disgrace.
NEKRASSOV
(translated by Juliet Soskice).
I
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, EXTREMELY
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.
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.
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 EVERYONE," I thought--and pondered.
From that it is evident that I was still a
youngster.
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, A PROPOS 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 ROMANTIC. 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.
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, TO SEE EVERYTHING AND
TO SEE IT OFTEN INCOMPARABLY MORE CLEARLY
THAN OUR MOST REALISTIC MINDS SEE IT; 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
An officer put me in my place from the first
moment.
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.
Devil knows what I would have given for a
real regular quarrel--a more decent, a more
LITERARY 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.
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.
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.
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 (POINT D'HONNEUR)--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.
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 OTETCHESTVENNIYA ZAPISKI. But at that
time such attacks were not the fashion and
my story was not printed. That was a great
vexation to me.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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
RECHERCHE: 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."
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 BON TON
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.
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.
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?
II
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, READY MADE (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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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.
III
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.
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 DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, 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.
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.
"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."
"Of course not, since we are inviting him,"
Simonov decided.
"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."
"Do we want half a dozen for the four of us?"
observed Trudolyubov, taking notice only of
the half dozen.
"So the three of us, with Zverkov for the
fourth, twenty-one roubles, at the Hotel de
Paris at five o'clock tomorrow," Simonov,
who had been asked to make the arrangements,
concluded finally.
"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."
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.
"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.
It infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly.
"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.
"And where were we to find you?" Ferfitchkin
put in roughly.
"You never were on good terms with Zverkov,"
Trudolyubov added, frowning.
But I had already clutched at the idea and
would not give it up.
"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."
"Oh, there's no making you out ... with these
refinements," Trudolyubov jeered.
"We'll put your name down," Simonov decided,
addressing me. "Tomorrow at five-o'clock at
the Hotel de Paris."
"What about the money?" Ferfitchkin began
in an undertone, indicating me to Simonov,
but he broke off, for even Simonov was embarrassed.
"That will do," said Trudolyubov, getting
up. "If he wants to come so much, let him."
"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."
"We do not want at all, perhaps ..."
They went away. Ferfitchkin did not greet
me in any way as he went out, Trudolyubov
barely nodded. Simonov, with whom I was left
TETE-A-TETE, was in a state of vexation and
perplexity, and looked at me queerly. He did
not sit down and did not ask me to.
"H'm ... yes ... tomorrow, then. Will you
pay your subscription now? I just ask so as
to know," he muttered in embarrassment.
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.
"You will understand, Simonov, that I could
have no idea when I came here.... I am very
much vexed that I have forgotten...."
"All right, all right, that doesn't matter.
You can pay tomorrow after the dinner. I simply
wanted to know.... Please don't..."
He broke off and began pacing the room still
more vexed. As he walked he began to stamp
with his heels.
"Am I keeping you?" I asked, after two minutes
of silence.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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...."
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.
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.
Not to pay him was impossible, considering
his character. But I will talk about that
fellow, about that plague of mine, another
time.
However, I knew I should go and should not
pay him his wages.
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!
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, UNLITERARY, 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 REAL THING!" 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 Hotel de Paris.
IV
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.
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.
"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."
And he turned carelessly to put down his hat
on the window.
"Have you been waiting long?" Trudolyubov
inquired.
"I arrived at five o'clock as you told me
yesterday," I answered aloud, with an irritability
that threatened an explosion.
"Didn't you let him know that we had changed
the hour?" said Trudolyubov to Simonov.
"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 HORS D'OEUVRE.
"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.
"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."
"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!"
"If a trick like that had been played on me,"
observed Ferfitchkin, "I should ..."
"But you should have ordered something for
yourself," Zverkov interrupted, "or simply
asked for dinner without waiting for us."
"You will allow that I might have done that
without your permission," I rapped out. "If
I waited, it was ..."
"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.
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.
"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.
"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.
"In the N---- office," I answered jerkily,
with my eyes on my plate.
"And ha-ave you a go-od berth? I say, what
ma-a-de you leave your original job?"
"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.
Zverkov winced, but he tried not to notice
it.
"And the remuneration?"
"What remuneration?"
"I mean, your sa-a-lary?"
"Why are you cross-examining me?" However,
I told him at once what my salary was. I turned
horribly red.
"It is not very handsome," Zverkov observed
majestically.
"Yes, you can't afford to dine at cafes on
that," Ferfitchkin added insolently.
"To my thinking it's very poor," Trudolyubov
observed gravely.
"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.
"Oh, spare his blushes," cried Ferfitchkin,
sniggering.
"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."
"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.
"Tha-at," I answered, feeling I had gone too
far, "and I imagine it would be better to
talk of something more intelligent."
"You intend to show off your intelligence,
I suppose?"
"Don't disturb yourself, that would be quite
out of place here."
"Why are you clacking away like that, my good
sir, eh? Have you gone out of your wits in
your office?"
"Enough, gentlemen, enough!" Zverkov cried,
authoritatively.
"How stupid it is!" muttered Simonov.
"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."
"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...."
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.
No one paid any attention to me, and I sat
crushed and humiliated.
"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!"
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!
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.
"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.
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.
Trudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone
else but me.
"Your health and good luck on the journey!"
he cried to Zverkov. "To old times, to our
future, hurrah!"
They all tossed off their glasses, and crowded
round Zverkov to kiss him. I did not move;
my full glass stood untouched before me.
"Why, aren't you going to drink it?" roared
Trudolyubov, losing patience and turning menacingly
to me.
"I want to make a speech separately, on my
own account ... and then I'll drink it, Mr.
Trudolyubov."
"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.
"SILENCE!" cried Ferfitchkin. "Now for a display
of wit!"
Zverkov waited very gravely, knowing what
was coming.
"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."
There was a general stir.
"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!"
Zverkov got up from his seat, bowed to me
and said:
"I am very much obliged to you." He was frightfully
offended and turned pale.
"Damn the fellow!" roared Trudolyubov, bringing
his fist down on the table.
"Well, he wants a punch in the face for that,"
squealed Ferfitchkin.
"We ought to turn him out," muttered Simonov.
"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."
"Mr. Ferfitchkin, you will give me satisfaction
tomorrow for your words just now!" I said
aloud, turning with dignity to Ferfitchkin.
"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.
"Yes, let him alone, of course! He is quite
drunk," Trudolyubov said with disgust.
"I shall never forgive myself for letting
him join us," Simonov muttered again.
"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!"
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 FIRST. 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.
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, TAKING NO NOTICE
OF THEM. But nothing came of it: they said
nothing, and two minutes later they ceased
to notice me again. It struck eleven.
"Friends," cried Zverkov getting up from the
sofa, "let us all be off now, THERE!"
"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.
"Zverkov, I beg your pardon," I said abruptly
and resolutely. "Ferfitchkin, yours too, and
everyone's, everyone's: I have insulted you
all!"
"Aha! A duel is not in your line, old man,"
Ferfitchkin hissed venomously.
It sent a sharp pang to my heart.
"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."
"He is comforting himself," said Simonov.
"He's simply raving," said Trudolyubov.
"But let us pass. Why are you barring our
way? What do you want?" Zverkov answered disdainfully.
They were all flushed, their eyes were bright:
they had been drinking heavily.
"I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted
you, but ..."
"Insulted? YOU insulted ME? Understand, sir,
that you never, under any circumstances, could
possibly insult ME."
"And that's enough for you. Out of the way!"
concluded Trudolyubov.
"Olympia is mine, friends, that's agreed!"
cried Zverkov.
"We won't dispute your right, we won't dispute
your right," the others answered, laughing.
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.
"Simonov! give me six roubles!" I said, with
desperate resolution.
He looked at me in extreme amazement, with
vacant eyes. He, too, was drunk.
"You don't mean you are coming with us?"
"Yes."
"I've no money," he snapped out, and with
a scornful laugh he went out of the room.
I clutched at his overcoat. It was a nightmare.
"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!"
Simonov pulled out the money and almost flung
it at me.
"Take it, if you have no sense of shame!"
he pronounced pitilessly, and ran to overtake
them.
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.
"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!"
V
"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!"
"You are a scoundrel," a thought flashed through
my mind, "if you laugh at this now."
"No matter!" I cried, answering myself. "Now
everything is lost!"
There was no trace to be seen of them, but
that made no difference--I knew where they
had gone.
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.
"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!"
We set off. There was a perfect whirl in my
head.
"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!"
The driver tugged at the reins.
"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.
"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...."
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 ....
"Get on, driver, get on, you rascal, get on!"
"Ugh, sir!" said the son of toil.
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!
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!"
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, THE WOMAN I LOVED,
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...."
I was actually on the point of tears, though
I knew perfectly well at that moment that
all this was out of Pushkin's SILVIO and Lermontov's
MASQUERADE. 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.
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!"
And in my impatience I punched the sledge-driver
on the back of the neck.
"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.
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 NOW, AT ONCE, and that
NO FORCE COULD STOP IT. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
VI
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"What is your name?" I asked abruptly, to
put an end to it.
"Liza," she answered almost in a whisper,
but somehow far from graciously, and she turned
her eyes away.
I was silent.
"What weather! The snow ... it's disgusting!"
I said, almost to myself, putting my arm under
my head despondently, and gazing at the ceiling.
She made no answer. This was horrible.
"Have you always lived in Petersburg?" I asked
a minute later, almost angrily, turning my
head slightly towards her.
"No."
"Where do you come from?"
"From Riga," she answered reluctantly.
"Are you a German?"
"No, Russian."
"Have you been here long?"
"Where?"
"In this house?"
"A fortnight."
She spoke more and more jerkily. The candle
went out; I could no longer distinguish her
face.
"Have you a father and mother?"
"Yes ... no ... I have."
"Where are they?"
"There ... in Riga."
"What are they?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Nothing? Why, what class are they?"
"Tradespeople."
"Have you always lived with them?"
"Yes."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"Why did you leave them?"
"Oh, for no reason."
That answer meant "Let me alone; I feel sick,
sad."
We were silent.
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.
"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.
"A coffin?"
"Yes, in the Haymarket; they were bringing
it up out of a cellar."
"From a cellar?"
"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."
Silence.
"A nasty day to be buried," I began, simply
to avoid being silent.
"Nasty, in what way?"
"The snow, the wet." (I yawned.)
"It makes no difference," she said suddenly,
after a brief silence.
"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."
"Why water in the grave?" she asked, with
a sort of curiosity, but speaking even more
harshly and abruptly than before.
I suddenly began to feel provoked.
"Why, there must have been water at the bottom
a foot deep. You can't dig a dry grave in
Volkovo Cemetery."
"Why?"
"Why? Why, the place is waterlogged. It's
a regular marsh. So they bury them in water.
I've seen it myself ... many times."
(I had never seen it once, indeed I had never
been in Volkovo, and had only heard stories
of it.)
"Do you mean to say, you don't mind how you
die?"
"But why should I die?" she answered, as though
defending herself.
"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."
"A wench would have died in hospital ..." (She
knows all about it already: she said "wench,"
not "girl.")
"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."
A great deal of this was my invention. Silence
followed, profound silence. She did not stir.
"And is it better to die in a hospital?"
"Isn't it just the same? Besides, why should
I die?" she added irritably.
"If not now, a little later."
"Why a little later?"
"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."
"In a year?"
"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."
"Oh, well, then I shall die," she answered,
quite vindictively, and she made a quick movement.
"But one is sorry."
"Sorry for whom?"
"Sorry for life." Silence.
"Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?"
"What's that to you?"
"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."
"Sorry for whom?"
"Sorry for you."
"No need," she whispered hardly audibly, and
again made a faint movement.
That incensed me at once. What! I was so gentle
with her, and she....
"Why, do you think that you are on the right
path?"
"I don't think anything."
"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...."
"Not all married women are happy," she snapped
out in the rude abrupt tone she had used at
first.
"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!"
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.
"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!"
"Yes!" she assented sharply and hurriedly.
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!
It was the exercise of my power that attracted
me most.
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.
"Why have you come here?" I asked her, with
a note of authority already in my voice.
"Oh, I don't know."
"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."
"But what if it's worse than this?"
"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.
"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...."
"A girl like me?" she whispered, hardly audibly;
but I heard it.
Damn it all, I was flattering her. That was
horrid. But perhaps it was a good thing....
She was silent.
"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."
I waited again. "Perhaps she doesn't understand,"
I thought, "and, indeed, it is absurd--it's
moralising."
"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.
"Why so?" she asked.
Ah! so she was listening!
"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."
"What next?" she said, with a faint smile.
"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."
"Some are glad to sell their daughters, rather
than marrying them honourably."
Ah, so that was it!
"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."
"And is it any better with the gentry? Even
among the poor, honest people who live happily?"
"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 YOU WILL
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF. 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!"
"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.
"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.
"What?" I asked, with tender curiosity.
"Why, you..."
"What?"
"Why, you ... speak somehow like a book,"
she said, and again there was a note of irony
in her voice.
That remark sent a pang to my heart. It was
not what I was expecting.
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.
"Wait a bit!" I thought.
VII
"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.'"
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.
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....
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.
"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.
"This is my address, Liza, come to me."
"I will come," she answered resolutely, her
head still bowed.
"But now I am going, good-bye ... till we
meet again."
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.
"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.
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, WHO KNEW NOTHING, 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
ABOUT THIS 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.
She dropped her shining eyes with a sort of
bashfulness as she finished.
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.
VIII
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 SENTIMENTALITY 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 OBVIOUSLY, 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.
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 Hotel 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 ..."
And it went off all right; all this was uttered
very easily, unconstrainedly and complacently.
On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.
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 Hotel 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!"
"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.
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.
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! ..."
When I reached that thought I fired up all
at once.
"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."
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.
Next day I was ready again to look upon it
all as nonsense, due to over-excited nerves,
and, above all, as EXAGGERATED. 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? ..."
But at this point I stopped short, and in
great confusion, indeed.
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!
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!
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.
'Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be'."
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.
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!
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.
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 PUNISH 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....
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,
A PROPOS 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.
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.
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.
"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.
"How dare you come and look at me like that
without being sent for? Answer!"
After looking at me calmly for half a minute,
he began turning round again.
"Stay!" I roared, running up to him, "don't
stir! There. Answer, now: what did you come
in to look at?"
"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.
"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! ..."
He would have turned round again without a
word, but I seized him.
"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?"
"That cannot be," he answered, with the most
unnatural self-confidence.
"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word
of honour, it shall be!"
"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."
"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this
very minute, this very second! You are a torturer
all the same! a torturer!"
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.
"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.
"Apollon," I said quietly and emphatically,
though I was breathless, "go at once without
a minute's delay and fetch the police-officer."
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.
"At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you
can't imagine what will happen."
"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."
"Go!" I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder.
I felt I should strike him in a minute.
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.
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.
"Go away, go away," I commanded in desperation.
At that moment my clock began whirring and
wheezing and struck seven.
IX
"Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be."
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.
"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 naivete of
expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained
myself.
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 ALL
THIS.
"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?...."
"No," she was beginning.
"Wait a minute."
I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get
out of the room somehow.
"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! ..."
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 A LA NAPOLEON. 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?
I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily.
For some minutes we were silent.
"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking
the table with my fist so that the ink spurted
out of the inkstand.
"What are you saying!" she cried, starting.
"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 ..."
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.
She was frightened.
"What is the matter? What is wrong?" she cried,
fussing about me.
"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, PUTTING IT ON,
to save appearances, though the attack was
a genuine one.
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.
"Liza, do you despise me?" I asked, looking
at her fixedly, trembling with impatience
to know what she was thinking.
She was confused, and did not know what to
answer.
"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.
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.
"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.
"Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly,
hardly audibly, and was getting up.
But as soon as I saw this first impulse of
wounded dignity I positively trembled with
spite, and at once burst out.
"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?"
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....
"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?"
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.
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.
"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.
My God! surely I was not envious of her then.
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.
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.
X
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 PERSONAL
HATRED, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned
away from her eyes.
"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.
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....
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.
"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.
"Liza!" I cried, more loudly.
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.
She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation.
I felt horribly oppressed.
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.
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.
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.
Where had she gone? And why was I running
after her?
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?
I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled
darkness and pondered this.
"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?
..."
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?
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.
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 EXPRESSLY 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."
[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.]
