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White nights, and other stories

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · English · Gutenberg #36034 · 669,722 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: White nights, and other stories

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translator: Constance Garnett


        
Release date: May 5, 2011 [eBook #36034]
                Most recently updated: September 18, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITE NIGHTS, AND OTHER STORIES ***




  WHITE NIGHTS
  AND OTHER STORIES

  THE NOVELS OF
  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
  VOLUME X




  WHITE NIGHTS

  AND OTHER STORIES BY
  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

  FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
  CONSTANCE GARNETT


  NEW YORK
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1918


  _Printed in Great Britain_




         CONTENTS


                                            PAGE

  WHITE NIGHTS                                1

  NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND--
    PART I. UNDERGROUND                      50
    PART II. À PROPOS OF THE WET SNOW        81

  A FAINT HEART                             156

  A CHRISTMAS TREE AND A WEDDING            200

  POLZUNKOV                                 208

  A LITTLE HERO                             223

  MR. PROHARTCHIN                           258




WHITE NIGHTS

A SENTIMENTAL STORY FROM THE DIARY OF A DREAMER


FIRST NIGHT

It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are
young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at
it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and
capricious people could live under such a sky. That is a youthful
question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more
frequently into your heart!... Speaking of capricious and ill-humoured
people, I cannot help recalling my moral condition all that day. From
early morning I had been oppressed by a strange despondency. It suddenly
seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and
going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who "every
one" was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg
I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I
was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was; that was why I felt as
though they were all deserting me when all Petersburg packed up and went
to its summer villa. I felt afraid of being left alone, and for three
whole days I wandered about the town in profound dejection, not knowing
what to do with myself. Whether I walked in the Nevsky, went to the
Gardens or sauntered on the embankment, there was not one face of those
I had been accustomed to meet at the same time and place all the year.
They, of course, do not know me, but I know them. I know them
intimately, I have almost made a study of their faces, and am delighted
when they are gay, and downcast when they are under a cloud. I have
almost struck up a friendship with one old man whom I meet every blessed
day, at the same hour in Fontanka. Such a grave, pensive countenance; he
is always whispering to himself and brandishing his left arm, while in
his right hand he holds a long gnarled stick with a gold knob. He even
notices me and takes a warm interest in me. If I happen not to be at a
certain time in the same spot in Fontanka, I am certain he feels
disappointed. That is how it is that we almost bow to each other,
especially when we are both in good humour. The other day, when we had
not seen each other for two days and met on the third, we were actually
touching our hats, but, realizing in time, dropped our hands and passed
each other with a look of interest.

I know the houses too. As I walk along they seem to run forward in the
streets to look out at me from every window, and almost to say:
"Good-morning! How do you do? I am quite well, thank God, and I am to
have a new storey in May," or, "How are you? I am being redecorated
to-morrow;" or, "I was almost burnt down and had such a fright," and so
on. I have my favourites among them, some are dear friends; one of them
intends to be treated by the architect this summer. I shall go every day
on purpose to see that the operation is not a failure. God forbid! But I
shall never forget an incident with a very pretty little house of a
light pink colour. It was such a charming little brick house, it looked
so hospitably at me, and so proudly at its ungainly neighbours, that my
heart rejoiced whenever I happened to pass it. Suddenly last week I
walked along the street, and when I looked at my friend I heard a
plaintive, "They are painting me yellow!" The villains! The barbarians!
They had spared nothing, neither columns, nor cornices, and my poor
little friend was as yellow as a canary. It almost made me bilious. And
to this day I have not had the courage to visit my poor disfigured
friend, painted the colour of the Celestial Empire.

So now you understand, reader, in what sense I am acquainted with all
Petersburg.

I have mentioned already that I had felt worried for three whole days
before I guessed the cause of my uneasiness. And I felt ill at ease in
the street--this one had gone and that one had gone, and what had become
of the other?--and at home I did not feel like myself either. For two
evenings I was puzzling my brains to think what was amiss in my corner;
why I felt so uncomfortable in it. And in perplexity I scanned my grimy
green walls, my ceiling covered with a spider's web, the growth of which
Matrona has so successfully encouraged. I looked over all my furniture,
examined every chair, wondering whether the trouble lay there (for if
one chair is not standing in the same position as it stood the day
before, I am not myself). I looked at the window, but it was all in vain
... I was not a bit the better for it! I even bethought me to send for
Matrona, and was giving her some fatherly admonitions in regard to the
spider's web and sluttishness in general; but she simply stared at me in
amazement and went away without saying a word, so that the spider's web
is comfortably hanging in its place to this day. I only at last this
morning realized what was wrong. Aie! Why, they are giving me the slip
and making off to their summer villas! Forgive the triviality of the
expression, but I am in no mood for fine language ... for everything
that had been in Petersburg had gone or was going away for the holidays;
for every respectable gentleman of dignified appearance who took a cab
was at once transformed, in my eyes, into a respectable head of a
household who after his daily duties were over, was making his way to
the bosom of his family, to the summer villa; for all the passers-by had
now quite a peculiar air which seemed to say to every one they met: "We
are only here for the moment, gentlemen, and in another two hours we
shall be going off to the summer villa." If a window opened after
delicate fingers, white as snow, had tapped upon the pane, and the head
of a pretty girl was thrust out, calling to a street-seller with pots of
flowers--at once on the spot I fancied that those flowers were being
bought not simply in order to enjoy the flowers and the spring in stuffy
town lodgings, but because they would all be very soon moving into the
country and could take the flowers with them. What is more, I made such
progress in my new peculiar sort of investigation that I could
distinguish correctly from the mere air of each in what summer villa he
was living. The inhabitants of Kamenny and Aptekarsky Islands or of the
Peterhof Road were marked by the studied elegance of their manner, their
fashionable summer suits, and the fine carriages in which they drove to
town. Visitors to Pargolovo and places further away impressed one at
first sight by their reasonable and dignified air; the tripper to
Krestovsky Island could be recognized by his look of irrepressible
gaiety. If I chanced to meet a long procession of waggoners walking
lazily with the reins in their hands beside waggons loaded with regular
mountains of furniture, tables, chairs, ottomans and sofas and domestic
utensils of all sorts, frequently with a decrepit cook sitting on the
top of it all, guarding her master's property as though it were the
apple of her eye; or if I saw boats heavily loaded with household goods
crawling along the Neva or Fontanka to the Black River or the
Islands--the waggons and the boats were multiplied tenfold, a
hundredfold, in my eyes. I fancied that everything was astir and moving,
everything was going in regular caravans to the summer villas. It seemed
as though Petersburg threatened to become a wilderness, so that at last
I felt ashamed, mortified and sad that I had nowhere to go for the
holidays and no reason to go away. I was ready to go away with every
waggon, to drive off with every gentleman of respectable appearance who
took a cab; but no one--absolutely no one--invited me; it seemed they
had forgotten me, as though really I were a stranger to them!

I took long walks, succeeding, as I usually did, in quite forgetting
where I was, when I suddenly found myself at the city gates. Instantly I
felt lighthearted, and I passed the barrier and walked between
cultivated fields and meadows, unconscious of fatigue, and feeling only
all over as though a burden were falling off my soul. All the passers-by
gave me such friendly looks that they seemed almost greeting me, they
all seemed so pleased at something. They were all smoking cigars, every
one of them. And I felt pleased as I never had before. It was as though
I had suddenly found myself in Italy--so strong was the effect of nature
upon a half-sick townsman like me, almost stifling between city walls.

There is something inexpressibly touching in nature round Petersburg,
when at the approach of spring she puts forth all her might, all the
powers bestowed on her by Heaven, when she breaks into leaf, decks
herself out and spangles herself with flowers.... Somehow I cannot help
being reminded of a frail, consumptive girl, at whom one sometimes looks
with compassion, sometimes with sympathetic love, whom sometimes one
simply does not notice; though suddenly in one instant she becomes, as
though by chance, inexplicably lovely and exquisite, and, impressed and
intoxicated, one cannot help asking oneself what power made those sad,
pensive eyes flash with such fire? What summoned the blood to those
pale, wan cheeks? What bathed with passion those soft features? What set
that bosom heaving? What so suddenly called strength, life and beauty
into the poor girl's face, making it gleam with such a smile, kindle
with such bright, sparkling laughter? You look round, you seek for some
one, you conjecture.... But the moment passes, and next day you meet,
maybe, the same pensive and preoccupied look as before, the same pale
face, the same meek and timid movements, and even signs of remorse,
traces of a mortal anguish and regret for the fleeting distraction....
And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to
return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve
because you had not even time to love her....

And yet my night was better than my day! This was how it happened.

I came back to the town very late, and it had struck ten as I was going
towards my lodgings. My way lay along the canal embankment, where at
that hour you never meet a soul. It is true that I live in a very remote
part of the town. I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am
always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or
acquaintance with whom to share his joy. Suddenly I had a most
unexpected adventure.

Leaning on the canal railing stood a woman with her elbows on the rail,
she was apparently looking with great attention at the muddy water of
the canal. She was wearing a very charming yellow hat and a jaunty
little black mantle. "She's a girl, and I am sure she is dark," I
thought. She did not seem to hear my footsteps, and did not even stir
when I passed by with bated breath and loudly throbbing heart.

"Strange," I thought; "she must be deeply absorbed in something," and
all at once I stopped as though petrified. I heard a muffled sob. Yes! I
was not mistaken, the girl was crying, and a minute later I heard sob
after sob. Good Heavens! My heart sank. And timid as I was with women,
yet this was such a moment!... I turned, took a step towards her, and
should certainly have pronounced the word "Madam!" if I had not known
that that exclamation has been uttered a thousand times in every Russian
society novel. It was only that reflection stopped me. But while I was
seeking for a word, the girl came to herself, looked round, started,
cast down her eyes and slipped by me along the embankment. I at once
followed her; but she, divining this, left the embankment, crossed the
road and walked along the pavement. I dared not cross the street after
her. My heart was fluttering like a captured bird. All at once a chance
came to my aid.

Along the same side of the pavement there suddenly came into sight, not
far from the girl, a gentleman in evening dress, of dignified years,
though by no means of dignified carriage; he was staggering and
cautiously leaning against the wall. The girl flew straight as an arrow,
with the timid haste one sees in all girls who do not want any one to
volunteer to accompany them home at night, and no doubt the staggering
gentleman would not have pursued her, if my good luck had not prompted
him.

Suddenly, without a word to any one, the gentleman set off and flew full
speed in pursuit of my unknown lady. She was racing like the wind, but
the staggering gentleman was overtaking--overtook her. The girl uttered
a shriek, and ... I bless my luck for the excellent knotted stick, which
happened on that occasion to be in my right hand. In a flash I was on
the other side of the street; in a flash the obtrusive gentleman had
taken in the position, had grasped the irresistible argument, fallen
back without a word, and only when we were very far away protested
against my action in rather vigorous language. But his words hardly
reached us.

"Give me your arm," I said to the girl. "And he won't dare to annoy us
further."

She took my arm without a word, still trembling with excitement and
terror. Oh, obtrusive gentleman! How I blessed you at that moment! I
stole a glance at her, she was very charming and dark--I had guessed
right.

On her black eyelashes there still glistened a tear--from her recent
terror or her former grief--I don't know. But there was already a gleam
of a smile on her lips. She too stole a glance at me, faintly blushed
and looked down.

"There, you see; why did you drive me away? If I had been here, nothing
would have happened...."

"But I did not know you; I thought that you too...."

"Why, do you know me now?"

"A little! Here, for instance, why are you trembling?"

"Oh, you are right at the first guess!" I answered, delighted that my
girl had intelligence; that is never out of place in company with
beauty. "Yes, from the first glance you have guessed the sort of man you
have to do with. Precisely; I am shy with women, I am agitated, I don't
deny it, as much so as you were a minute ago when that gentleman alarmed
you. I am in some alarm now. It's like a dream, and I never guessed even
in my sleep that I should ever talk with any woman."

"What? Really?..."

"Yes; if my arm trembles, it is because it has never been held by a
pretty little hand like yours. I am a complete stranger to women; that
is, I have never been used to them. You see, I am alone.... I don't even
know how to talk to them. Here, I don't know now whether I have not said
something silly to you! Tell me frankly; I assure you beforehand that I
am not quick to take offence?..."

"No, nothing, nothing, quite the contrary. And if you insist on my
speaking frankly, I will tell you that women like such timidity; and if
you want to know more, I like it too, and I won't drive you away till I
get home."

"You will make me," I said, breathless with delight, "lose my timidity,
and then farewell to all my chances...."

"Chances! What chances--of what? That's not so nice."

"I beg your pardon, I am sorry, it was a slip of the tongue; but how can
you expect one at such a moment to have no desire...."

"To be liked, eh?"

"Well, yes; but do, for goodness' sake, be kind. Think what I am! Here,
I am twenty-six and I have never seen any one. How can I speak well,
tactfully, and to the point? It will seem better to you when I have told
you everything openly.... I don't know how to be silent when my heart is
speaking. Well, never mind.... Believe me, not one woman, never, never!
No acquaintance of any sort! And I do nothing but dream every day that
at last I shall meet some one. Oh, if only you knew how often I have
been in love in that way...."

"How? With whom?..."

"Why, with no one, with an ideal, with the one I dream of in my sleep. I
make up regular romances in my dreams. Ah, you don't know me! It's true,
of course, I have met two or three women, but what sort of women were
they? They were all landladies, that.... But I shall make you laugh if I
tell you that I have several times thought of speaking, just simply
speaking, to some aristocratic lady in the street, when she is alone, I
need hardly say; speaking to her, of course, timidly, respectfully,
passionately; telling her that I am perishing in solitude, begging her
not to send me away; saying that I have no chance of making the
acquaintance of any woman; impressing upon her that it is a positive
duty for a woman not to repulse so timid a prayer from such a luckless
man as me. That, in fact, all I ask is, that she should say two or three
sisterly words with sympathy, should not repulse me at first sight;
should take me on trust and listen to what I say; should laugh at me if
she likes, encourage me, say two words to me, only two words, even
though we never meet again afterwards!... But you are laughing; however,
that is why I am telling you...."

"Don't be vexed; I am only laughing at your being your own enemy, and if
you had tried you would have succeeded, perhaps, even though it had been
in the street; the simpler the better.... No kind-hearted woman, unless
she were stupid or, still more, vexed about something at the moment,
could bring herself to send you away without those two words which you
ask for so timidly.... But what am I saying? Of course she would take
you for a madman. I was judging by myself; I know a good deal about
other people's lives."

"Oh, thank you," I cried; "you don't know what you have done for me
now!"

"I am glad! I am glad! But tell me how did you find out that I was the
sort of woman with whom ... well, whom you think worthy ... of attention
and friendship ... in fact, not a landlady as you say? What made you
decide to come up to me?"

"What made me?... But you were alone; that gentleman was too insolent;
it's night. You must admit that it was a duty...."

"No, no; I mean before, on the other side--you know you meant to come up
to me."

"On the other side? Really I don't know how to answer; I am afraid
to.... Do you know I have been happy to-day? I walked along singing; I
went out into the country; I have never had such happy moments. You ...
perhaps it was my fancy.... Forgive me for referring to it; I fancied
you were crying, and I ... could not bear to hear it ... it made my
heart ache.... Oh, my goodness! Surely I might be troubled about you?
Surely there was no harm in feeling brotherly compassion for you.... I
beg your pardon, I said compassion.... Well, in short, surely you would
not be offended at my involuntary impulse to go up to you?..."

"Stop, that's enough, don't talk of it," said the girl, looking down,
and pressing my hand. "It's my fault for having spoken of it; but I am
glad I was not mistaken in you.... But here I am home; I must go down
this turning, it's two steps from here.... Good-bye, thank you!..."

"Surely ... surely you don't mean ... that we shall never see each other
again?... Surely this is not to be the end?"

"You see," said the girl, laughing, "at first you only wanted two words,
and now.... However, I won't say anything ... perhaps we shall meet...."

"I shall come here to-morrow," I said. "Oh, forgive me, I am already
making demands...."

"Yes, you are not very patient ... you are almost insisting."

"Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something
else.... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a
dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as
this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again
in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a
whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this
place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering to-day.
This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such
places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories ... like you....
Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory....
But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once
been particularly happy here...."

"Very good," said the girl, "perhaps I will come here to-morrow, too, at
ten o'clock. I see that I can't forbid you.... The fact is, I have to be
here; don't imagine that I am making an appointment with you; I tell you
beforehand that I have to be here on my own account. But ... well, I
tell you straight out, I don't mind if you do come. To begin with,
something unpleasant might happen as it did to-day, but never mind
that.... In short, I should simply like to see you ... to say two words
to you. Only, mind, you must not think the worse of me now! Don't think
I make appointments so lightly.... I shouldn't make it except that....
But let that be my secret! Only a compact beforehand...."

"A compact! Speak, tell me, tell me all beforehand; I agree to anything,
I am ready for anything," I cried delighted. "I answer for myself, I
will be obedient, respectful ... you know me...."

"It's just because I do know you that I ask you to come to-morrow," said
the girl, laughing. "I know you perfectly. But mind you will come on the
condition, in the first place (only be good, do what I ask--you see, I
speak frankly), you won't fall in love with me.... That's impossible, I
assure you. I am ready for friendship; here's my hand.... But you
mustn't fall in love with me, I beg you!"

"I swear," I cried, gripping her hand....

"Hush, don't swear, I know you are ready to flare up like gunpowder.
Don't think ill of me for saying so. If only you knew.... I, too, have
no one to whom I can say a word, whose advice I can ask. Of course, one
does not look for an adviser in the street; but you are an exception. I
know you as though we had been friends for twenty years.... You won't
deceive me, will you?..."

"You will see ... the only thing is, I don't know how I am going to
survive the next twenty-four hours."

"Sleep soundly. Good-night, and remember that I have trusted you
already. But you exclaimed so nicely just now, 'Surely one can't be held
responsible for every feeling, even for brotherly sympathy!' Do you
know, that was so nicely said, that the idea struck me at once, that I
might confide in you?"

"For God's sake do; but about what? What is it?"

"Wait till to-morrow. Meanwhile, let that be a secret. So much the
better for you; it will give it a faint flavour of romance. Perhaps I
will tell you to-morrow, and perhaps not.... I will talk to you a little
more beforehand; we will get to know each other better...."

"Oh yes, I will tell you all about myself to-morrow! But what has
happened? It is as though a miracle had befallen me.... My God, where am
I? Come, tell me aren't you glad that you were not angry and did not
drive me away at the first moment, as any other woman would have done?
In two minutes you have made me happy for ever. Yes, happy; who knows,
perhaps, you have reconciled me with myself, solved my doubts!...
Perhaps such moments come upon me.... But there I will tell you all
about it to-morrow, you shall know everything, everything...."

"Very well, I consent; you shall begin...."

"Agreed."

"Good-bye till to-morrow!"

"Till to-morrow!"

And we parted. I walked about all night; I could not make up my mind to
go home. I was so happy.... To-morrow!


SECOND NIGHT

"Well, so you have survived!" she said, pressing both my hands.

"I've been here for the last two hours; you don't know what a state I
have been in all day."

"I know, I know. But to business. Do you know why I have come? Not to
talk nonsense, as I did yesterday. I tell you what, we must behave more
sensibly in future. I thought a great deal about it last night."

"In what way--in what must we be more sensible? I am ready for my part;
but, really, nothing more sensible has happened to me in my life than
this, now."

"Really? In the first place, I beg you not to squeeze my hands so;
secondly, I must tell you that I spent a long time thinking about you
and feeling doubtful to-day."

"And how did it end?"

"How did it end? The upshot of it is that we must begin all over again,
because the conclusion I reached to-day was that I don't know you at
all; that I behaved like a baby last night, like a little girl; and, of
course, the fact of it is, that it's my soft heart that is to
blame--that is, I sang my own praises, as one always does in the end
when one analyses one's conduct. And therefore to correct my mistake,
I've made up my mind to find out all about you minutely. But as I have
no one from whom I can find out anything, you must tell me everything
fully yourself. Well, what sort of man are you? Come, make
haste--begin--tell me your whole history."

"My history!" I cried in alarm. "My history! But who has told you I have
a history? I have no history...."

"Then how have you lived, if you have no history?" she interrupted,
laughing.

"Absolutely without any history! I have lived, as they say, keeping
myself to myself, that is, utterly alone--alone, entirely alone. Do you
know what it means to be alone?"

"But how alone? Do you mean you never saw any one?"

"Oh no, I see people, of course; but still I am alone."

"Why, do you never talk to any one?"

"Strictly speaking, with no one."

"Who are you then? Explain yourself! Stay, I guess: most likely, like me
you have a grandmother. She is blind and will never let me go anywhere,
so that I have almost forgotten how to talk; and when I played some
pranks two years ago, and she saw there was no holding me in, she called
me up and pinned my dress to hers, and ever since we sit like that for
days together; she knits a stocking, though she's blind, and I sit
beside her, sew or read aloud to her--it's such a queer habit, here for
two years I've been pinned to her...."

"Good Heavens! what misery! But no, I haven't a grandmother like that."

"Well, if you haven't why do you sit at home?..."

"Listen, do you want to know the sort of man I am?"

"Yes, yes!"

"In the strict sense of the word?"

"In the very strictest sense of the word."

"Very well, I am a type!"

"Type, type! What sort of type?" cried the girl, laughing, as though she
had not had a chance of laughing for a whole year. "Yes, it's very
amusing talking to you. Look, here's a seat, let us sit down. No one is
passing here, no one will hear us, and--begin your history. For it's no
good your telling me, I know you have a history; only you are concealing
it. To begin with, what is a type?"

"A type? A type is an original, it's an absurd person!" I said, infected
by her childish laughter. "It's a character. Listen; do you know what is
meant by a dreamer?"

"A dreamer! Indeed I should think I do know. I am a dreamer myself.
Sometimes, as I sit by grandmother, all sorts of things come into my
head. Why, when one begins dreaming one lets one's fancy run away with
one--why, I marry a Chinese Prince!... Though sometimes it is a good
thing to dream! But, goodness knows! Especially when one has something
to think of apart from dreams," added the girl, this time rather
seriously.

"Excellent! If you have been married to a Chinese Emperor, you will
quite understand me. Come, listen.... But one minute, I don't know your
name yet."

"At last! You have been in no hurry to think of it!"

"Oh, my goodness! It never entered my head, I felt quite happy as it
was...."

"My name is Nastenka."

"Nastenka! And nothing else?"

"Nothing else! Why, is not that enough for you, you insatiable person?"

"Not enough? On the contrary, it's a great deal, a very great deal,
Nastenka; you kind girl, if you are Nastenka for me from the first."

"Quite so! Well?"

"Well, listen, Nastenka, now for this absurd history."

I sat down beside her, assumed a pedantically serious attitude, and
began as though reading from a manuscript:--

"There are, Nastenka, though you may not know it, strange nooks in
Petersburg. It seems as though the same sun as shines for all Petersburg
people does not peep into those spots, but some other different new one,
bespoken expressly for those nooks, and it throws a different light on
everything. In these corners, dear Nastenka, quite a different life is
lived, quite unlike the life that is surging round us, but such as
perhaps exists in some unknown realm, not among us in our serious,
over-serious, time. Well, that life is a mixture of something purely
fantastic, fervently ideal, with something (alas! Nastenka) dingily
prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar."

"Foo! Good Heavens! What a preface! What do I hear?"

"Listen, Nastenka. (It seems to me I shall never be tired of calling you
Nastenka.) Let me tell you that in these corners live strange
people--dreamers. The dreamer--if you want an exact definition--is not a
human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part
he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light
of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or,
anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature,
which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise.
Why do you suppose he is so fond of his four walls, which are invariably
painted green, grimy, dismal and reeking unpardonably of tobacco smoke?
Why is it that when this absurd gentleman is visited by one of his few
acquaintances (and he ends by getting rid of all his friends), why does
this absurd person meet him with such embarrassment, changing
countenance and overcome with confusion, as though he had only just
committed some crime within his four walls; as though he had been
forging counterfeit notes, or as though he were writing verses to be
sent to a journal with an anonymous letter, in which he states that the
real poet is dead, and that his friend thinks it his sacred duty to
publish his things? Why, tell me, Nastenka, why is it conversation is
not easy between the two friends? Why is there no laughter? Why does no
lively word fly from the tongue of the perplexed newcomer, who at other
times may be very fond of laughter, lively words, conversation about the
fair sex, and other cheerful subjects? And why does this friend,
probably a new friend and on his first visit--for there will hardly be a
second, and the friend will never come again--why is the friend himself
so confused, so tongue-tied, in spite of his wit (if he has any), as he
looks at the downcast face of his host, who in his turn becomes utterly
helpless and at his wits' end after gigantic but fruitless efforts to
smooth things over and enliven the conversation, to show his knowledge
of polite society, to talk, too, of the fair sex, and by such humble
endeavour, to please the poor man, who like a fish out of water has
mistakenly come to visit him? Why does the gentleman, all at once
remembering some very necessary business which never existed, suddenly
seize his hat and hurriedly make off, snatching away his hand from the
warm grip of his host, who was trying his utmost to show his regret and
retrieve the lost position? Why does the friend chuckle as he goes out
of the door, and swear never to come and see this queer creature again,
though the queer creature is really a very good fellow, and at the same
time he cannot refuse his imagination the little diversion of comparing
the queer fellow's countenance during their conversation with the
expression of an unhappy kitten treacherously captured, roughly handled,
frightened and subjected to all sorts of indignities by children, till,
utterly crestfallen, it hides away from them under a chair in the dark,
and there must needs at its leisure bristle up, spit, and wash its
insulted face with both paws, and long afterwards look angrily at life
and nature, and even at the bits saved from the master's dinner for it
by the sympathetic housekeeper?"

"Listen," interrupted Nastenka, who had listened to me all the time in
amazement, opening her eyes and her little mouth. "Listen; I don't know
in the least why it happened and why you ask me such absurd questions;
all I know is, that this adventure must have happened word for word to
you."

"Doubtless," I answered, with the gravest face.

"Well, since there is no doubt about it, go on," said Nastenka, "because
I want very much to know how it will end."

"You want to know, Nastenka, what our hero, that is I--for the hero of
the whole business was my humble self--did in his corner? You want to
know why I lost my head and was upset for the whole day by the
unexpected visit of a friend? You want to know why I was so startled,
why I blushed when the door of my room was opened, why I was not able to
entertain my visitor, and why I was crushed under the weight of my own
hospitality?"

"Why, yes, yes," answered Nastenka, "that's the point. Listen. You
describe it all splendidly, but couldn't you perhaps describe it a
little less splendidly? You talk as though you were reading it out of a
book."

"Nastenka," I answered in a stern and dignified voice, hardly able to
keep from laughing, "dear Nastenka, I know I describe splendidly, but,
excuse me, I don't know how else to do it. At this moment, dear
Nastenka, at this moment I am like the spirit of King Solomon when,
after lying a thousand years under seven seals in his urn, those seven
seals were at last taken off. At this moment, Nastenka, when we have met
at last after such a long separation--for I have known you for ages,
Nastenka, because I have been looking for some one for ages, and that is
a sign that it was you I was looking for, and it was ordained that we
should meet now--at this moment a thousand valves have opened in my
head, and I must let myself flow in a river of words, or I shall choke.
And so I beg you not to interrupt me, Nastenka, but listen humbly and
obediently, or I will be silent."

"No, no, no! Not at all. Go on! I won't say a word!"

"I will continue. There is, my friend Nastenka, one hour in my day which
I like extremely. That is the hour when almost all business, work and
duties are over, and every one is hurrying home to dinner, to lie down,
to rest, and on the way all are cogitating on other more cheerful
subjects relating to their evenings, their nights, and all the rest of
their free time. At that hour our hero--for allow me, Nastenka, to tell
my story in the third person, for one feels awfully ashamed to tell it
in the first person--and so at that hour our hero, who had his work too,
was pacing along after the others. But a strange feeling of pleasure set
his pale, rather crumpled-looking face working. He looked not with
indifference on the evening glow which was slowly fading on the cold
Petersburg sky. When I say he looked, I am lying: he did not look at it,
but saw it as it were without realizing, as though tired or preoccupied
with some other more interesting subject, so that he could scarcely
spare a glance for anything about him. He was pleased because till next
day he was released from business irksome to him, and happy as a
schoolboy let out from the class-room to his games and mischief. Take a
look at him, Nastenka; you will see at once that joyful emotion has
already had an effect on his weak nerves and morbidly excited fancy. You
see he is thinking of something.... Of dinner, do you imagine? Of the
evening? What is he looking at like that? Is it at that gentleman of
dignified appearance who is bowing so picturesquely to the lady who
rolls by in a carriage drawn by prancing horses? No, Nastenka; what are
all those trivialities to him now! He is rich now with his _own
individual_ life; he has suddenly become rich, and it is not for
nothing that the fading sunset sheds its farewell gleams so gaily before
him, and calls forth a swarm of impressions from his warmed heart. Now
he hardly notices the road, on which the tiniest details at other times
would strike him. Now 'the Goddess of Fancy' (if you have read
Zhukovsky, dear Nastenka) has already with fantastic hand spun her
golden warp and begun weaving upon it patterns of marvellous magic
life--and who knows, maybe, her fantastic hand has borne him to the
seventh crystal heaven far from the excellent granite pavement on which
he was walking his way? Try stopping him now, ask him suddenly where he
is standing now, through what streets he is going--he will, probably
remember nothing, neither where he is going nor where he is standing
now, and flushing with vexation he will certainly tell some lie to save
appearances. That is why he starts, almost cries out, and looks round
with horror when a respectable old lady stops him politely in the middle
of the pavement and asks her way. Frowning with vexation he strides on,
scarcely noticing that more than one passer-by smiles and turns round to
look after him, and that a little girl, moving out of his way in alarm,
laughs aloud, gazing open-eyed at his broad meditative smile and
gesticulations. But fancy catches up in its playful flight the old
woman, the curious passers-by, and the laughing child, and the peasants
spending their nights in their barges on Fontanka (our hero, let us
suppose, is walking along the canal-side at that moment), and
capriciously weaves every one and everything into the canvas like a fly
in a spider's web. And it is only after the queer fellow has returned to
his comfortable den with fresh stores for his mind to work on, has sat
down and finished his dinner, that he comes to himself, when Matrona who
waits upon him--always thoughtful and depressed--clears the table and
gives him his pipe; he comes to himself then and recalls with surprise
that he has dined, though he has absolutely no notion how it has
happened. It has grown dark in the room; his soul is sad and empty; the
whole kingdom of fancies drops to pieces about him, drops to pieces
without a trace, without a sound, floats away like a dream, and he
cannot himself remember what he was dreaming. But a vague sensation
faintly stirs his heart and sets it aching, some new desire temptingly
tickles and excites his fancy, and imperceptibly evokes a swarm of fresh
phantoms. Stillness reigns in the little room; imagination is fostered
by solitude and idleness; it is faintly smouldering, faintly simmering,
like the water with which old Matrona is making her coffee as she moves
quietly about in the kitchen close by. Now it breaks out spasmodically;
and the book, picked up aimlessly and at random, drops from my dreamer's
hand before he has reached the third page. His imagination is again
stirred and at work, and again a new world, a new fascinating life opens
vistas before him. A fresh dream--fresh happiness! A fresh rush of
delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him! To his corrupted
eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in
his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our
life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as
though ill-humoured among us.... Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it
is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so
enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him
in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in
the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious
person. See what varied adventures, what an endless swarm of ecstatic
dreams. You ask, perhaps, what he is dreaming of. Why ask that?--why, of
everything ... of the lot of the poet, first unrecognized, then crowned
with laurels; of friendship with Hoffmann, St. Bartholomew's Night, of
Diana Vernon, of playing the hero at the taking of Kazan by Ivan
Vassilyevitch, of Clara Mowbray, of Effie Deans, of the council of the
prelates and Huss before them, of the rising of the dead in 'Robert the
Devil' (do you remember the music, it smells of the churchyard!), of
Minna and Brenda, of the battle of Berezina, of the reading of a poem at
Countess V. D.'s, of Danton, of Cleopatra _ei suoi amanti_, of a
little house in Kolomna, of a little home of one's own and beside one a
dear creature who listens to one on a winter's evening, opening her
little mouth and eyes as you are listening to me now, my angel.... No,
Nastenka, what is there, what is there for him, voluptuous sluggard, in
this life, for which you and I have such a longing? He thinks that this
is a poor pitiful life, not foreseeing that for him too, maybe, sometime
the mournful hour may strike, when for one day of that pitiful life he
would give all his years of phantasy, and would give them not only for
joy and for happiness, but without caring to make distinctions in that
hour of sadness, remorse and unchecked grief. But so far that
threatening has not arrived--he desires nothing, because he is superior
to all desire, because he has everything, because he is satiated,
because he is the artist of his own life, and creates it for himself
every hour to suit his latest whim. And you know this fantastic world of
fairyland is so easily, so naturally created! As though it were not a
delusion! Indeed, he is ready to believe at some moments that all this
life is not suggested by feeling, is not mirage, not a delusion of the
imagination, but that it is concrete, real, substantial! Why is it,
Nastenka, why is it at such moments one holds one's breath? Why, by what
sorcery, through what incomprehensible caprice, is the pulse quickened,
does a tear start from the dreamer's eye, while his pale moist cheeks
glow, while his whole being is suffused with an inexpressible sense of
consolation? Why is it that whole sleepless nights pass like a flash in
inexhaustible gladness and happiness, and when the dawn gleams rosy at
the window and daybreak floods the gloomy room with uncertain, fantastic
light, as in Petersburg, our dreamer, worn out and exhausted, flings
himself on his bed and drops asleep with thrills of delight in his
morbidly overwrought spirit, and with a weary sweet ache in his heart?
Yes, Nastenka, one deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real
true passion is stirring one's soul; one unconsciously believes that
there is something living, tangible in one's immaterial dreams! And is
it delusion? Here love, for instance, is bound up with all its
fathomless joy, all its torturing agonies in his bosom.... Only look at
him, and you will be convinced! Would you believe, looking at him, dear
Nastenka, that he has never known her whom he loves in his ecstatic
dreams? Can it be that he has only seen her in seductive visions, and
that this passion has been nothing but a dream? Surely they must have
spent years hand in hand together--alone the two of them, casting off
all the world and each uniting his or her life with the other's? Surely
when the hour of parting came she must have lain sobbing and grieving on
his bosom, heedless of the tempest raging under the sullen sky, heedless
of the wind which snatches and bears away the tears from her black
eyelashes? Can all of that have been a dream--and that garden, dejected,
forsaken, run wild, with its little moss-grown paths, solitary, gloomy,
where they used to walk so happily together, where they hoped, grieved,
loved, loved each other so long, "so long and so fondly?" And that queer
ancestral house where she spent so many years lonely and sad with her
morose old husband, always silent and splenetic, who frightened them,
while timid as children they hid their love from each other? What
torments they suffered, what agonies of terror, how innocent, how pure
was their love, and how (I need hardly say, Nastenka) malicious people
were! And, good Heavens! surely he met her afterwards, far from their
native shores, under alien skies, in the hot south in the divinely
eternal city, in the dazzling splendour of the ball to the crash of
music, in a _palazzo_ (it must be in a _palazzo_), drowned in
a sea of lights, on the balcony, wreathed in myrtle and roses, where,
recognizing him, she hurriedly removes her mask and whispering, 'I am
free,' flings herself trembling into his arms, and with a cry of
rapture, clinging to one another, in one instant they forget their
sorrow and their parting and all their agonies, and the gloomy house and
the old man and the dismal garden in that distant land, and the seat on
which with a last passionate kiss she tore herself away from his arms
numb with anguish and despair.... Oh, Nastenka, you must admit that one
would start, betray confusion, and blush like a schoolboy who has just
stuffed in his pocket an apple stolen from a neighbour's garden, when
your uninvited visitor, some stalwart, lanky fellow, a festive soul fond
of a joke, opens your door and shouts out as though nothing were
happening: 'My dear boy, I have this minute come from Pavlovsk.' My
goodness! the old count is dead, unutterable happiness is close at
hand--and people arrive from Pavlovsk!"

Finishing my pathetic appeal, I paused pathetically. I remembered that I
had an intense desire to force myself to laugh, for I was already
feeling that a malignant demon was stirring within me, that there was a
lump in my throat, that my chin was beginning to twitch, and that my
eyes were growing more and more moist.

I expected Nastenka, who listened to me opening her clever eyes, would
break into her childish, irrepressible laugh; and I was already
regretting that I had gone so far, that I had unnecessarily described
what had long been simmering in my heart, about which I could speak as
though from a written account of it, because I had long ago passed
judgment on myself and now could not resist reading it, making my
confession, without expecting to be understood; but to my surprise she
was silent, waiting a little, then she faintly pressed my hand and with
timid sympathy asked--

"Surely you haven't lived like that all your life?"

"All my life, Nastenka," I answered; "all my life, and it seems to me I
shall go on so to the end."

"No, that won't do," she said uneasily, "that must not be; and so,
maybe, I shall spend all my life beside grandmother. Do you know, it is
not at all good to live like that?"

"I know, Nastenka, I know!" I cried, unable to restrain my feelings
longer. "And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best
years! And now I know it and feel it more painfully from recognizing
that God has sent me you, my good angel, to tell me that and show it.
Now that I sit beside you and talk to you it is strange for me to think
of the future, for in the future--there is loneliness again, again this
musty, useless life; and what shall I have to dream of when I have been
so happy in reality beside you! Oh, may you be blessed, dear girl, for
not having repulsed me at first, for enabling me to say that for two
evenings, at least, I have lived."

"Oh, no, no!" cried Nastenka and tears glistened in her eyes. "No, it
mustn't be so any more; we must not part like that! what are two
evenings?"

"Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! Do you know how far you have reconciled me to
myself? Do you know now that I shall not think so ill of myself, as I
have at some moments? Do you know that, maybe, I shall leave off
grieving over the crime and sin of my life? for such a life is a crime
and a sin. And do not imagine that I have been exaggerating
anything--for goodness' sake don't think that, Nastenka: for at times
such misery comes over me, such misery.... Because it begins to seem to
me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life,
because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for
the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because
after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which
are awful! Meanwhile, you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the
vortex of life around you; you hear, you see, men living in reality; you
see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float
away like a dream, like a vision; that their life is being eternally
renewed, eternally youthful, and not one hour of it is the same as
another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and
easily scared, the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first
cloud that shrouds the sun, and overcasts with depression the true
Petersburg heart so devoted to the sun--and what is fancy in depression!
One feels that this _inexhaustible_ fancy is weary at last and worn
out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood,
outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments,
into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the
fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else!
And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a
spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled
heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so
sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears
from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him! Do you know, Nastenka,
the point I have reached? Do you know that I am forced now to celebrate
the anniversary of my own sensations, the anniversary of that which was
once so sweet, which never existed in reality--for this anniversary is
kept in memory of those same foolish, shadowy dreams--and to do this
because those foolish dreams are no more, because I have nothing to earn
them with; you know even dreams do not come for nothing! Do you know
that I love now to recall and visit at certain dates the places where I
was once happy in my own way? I love to build up my present in harmony
with the irrevocable past, and I often wander like a shadow, aimless,
sad and dejected, about the streets and crooked lanes of Petersburg.
What memories they are! To remember, for instance, that here just a year
ago, just at this time, at this hour, on this pavement, I wandered just
as lonely, just as dejected as to-day. And one remembers that then one's
dreams were sad, and though the past was no better one feels as though
it had somehow been better, and that life was more peaceful, that one
was free from the black thoughts that haunt one now; that one was free
from the gnawing of conscience--the gloomy, sullen gnawing which now
gives me no rest by day or by night. And one asks oneself where are
one's dreams. And one shakes one's head and says how rapidly the years
fly by! And again one asks oneself what has one done with one's years.
Where have you buried your best days? Have you lived or not? Look, one
says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing. Some more years
will pass, and after them will come gloomy solitude; then will come old
age trembling on its crutch, and after it misery and desolation. Your
fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die and will
fall like the yellow leaves from the trees.... Oh, Nastenka! you know it
will be sad to be left alone, utterly alone, and to have not even
anything to regret--nothing, absolutely nothing ... for all that you
have lost, all that, all was nothing, stupid, simple nullity, there has
been nothing but dreams!"

"Come, don't work on my feelings any more," said Nastenka, wiping away a
tear which was trickling down her cheek. "Now it's over! Now we shall be
two together. Now, whatever happens to me, we will never part. Listen; I
am a simple girl, I have not had much education, though grandmother did
get a teacher for me, but truly I understand you, for all that you have
described I have been through myself, when grandmother pinned me to her
dress. Of course, I should not have described it so well as you have; I
am not educated," she added timidly, for she was still feeling a sort of
respect for my pathetic eloquence and lofty style; "but I am very glad
that you have been quite open with me. Now I know you thoroughly, all of
you. And do you know what? I want to tell you my history too, all
without concealment, and after that you must give me advice. You are a
very clever man; will you promise to give me advice?"

"Ah, Nastenka," I cried, "though I have never given advice, still less
sensible advice, yet I see now that if we always go on like this that it
will be very sensible, and that each of us will give the other a great
deal of sensible advice! Well, my pretty Nastenka, what sort of advice
do you want? Tell me frankly; at this moment I am so gay and happy, so
bold and sensible, that it won't be difficult for me to find words."

"No, no!" Nastenka interrupted, laughing. "I don't only want sensible
advice, I want warm brotherly advice, as though you had been fond of me
all your life!"

"Agreed, Nastenka, agreed!" I cried delighted; "and if I had been fond
of you for twenty years, I couldn't have been fonder of you than I am
now."

"Your hand," said Nastenka.

"Here it is," said I, giving her my hand.

"And so let us begin my history!"


NASTENKA'S HISTORY

"Half my story you know already--that is, you know that I have an old
grandmother...."

"If the other half is as brief as that ..." I interrupted, laughing.

"Be quiet and listen. First of all you must agree not to interrupt me,
or else, perhaps I shall get in a muddle! Come, listen quietly.

"I have an old grandmother. I came into her hands when I was quite a
little girl, for my father and mother are dead. It must be supposed that
grandmother was once richer, for now she recalls better days. She taught
me French, and then got a teacher for me. When I was fifteen (and now I
am seventeen) we gave up having lessons. It was at that time that I got
into mischief; what I did I won't tell you; it's enough to say that it
wasn't very important. But grandmother called me to her one morning and
said that as she was blind she could not look after me; she took a pin
and pinned my dress to hers, and said that we should sit like that for
the rest of our lives if, of course, I did not become a better girl. In
fact, at first it was impossible to get away from her: I had to work, to
read and to study all beside grandmother. I tried to deceive her once,
and persuaded Fekla to sit in my place. Fekla is our charwoman, she is
deaf. Fekla sat there instead of me; grandmother was asleep in her
armchair at the time, and I went off to see a friend close by. Well, it
ended in trouble. Grandmother woke up while I was out, and asked some
questions; she thought I was still sitting quietly in my place. Fekla
saw that grandmother was asking her something, but could not tell what
it was; she wondered what to do, undid the pin and ran away...."

At this point Nastenka stopped and began laughing. I laughed with her.
She left off at once.

"I tell you what, don't you laugh at grandmother. I laugh because it's
funny.... What can I do, since grandmother is like that; but yet I am
fond of her in a way. Oh, well, I did catch it that time. I had to sit
down in my place at once, and after that I was not allowed to stir.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that our house belongs to us, that is to
grandmother; it is a little wooden house with three windows as old as
grandmother herself, with a little upper storey; well, there moved into
our upper storey a new lodger."

"Then you had an old lodger," I observed casually.

"Yes, of course," answered Nastenka, "and one who knew how to hold his
tongue better than you do. In fact, he hardly ever used his tongue at
all. He was a dumb, blind, lame, dried-up little old man, so that at
last he could not go on living, he died; so then we had to find a new
lodger, for we could not live without a lodger--the rent, together with
grandmother's pension, is almost all we have. But the new lodger, as
luck would have it, was a young man, a stranger not of these parts. As
he did not haggle over the rent, grandmother accepted him, and only
afterwards she asked me: 'Tell me, Nastenka, what is our lodger like--is
he young or old?' I did not want to lie, so I told grandmother that he
wasn't exactly young and that he wasn't old.

"'And is he pleasant looking?' asked grandmother.

"Again I did not want to tell a lie: 'Yes, he is pleasant looking,
grandmother,' I said. And grandmother said: 'Oh, what a nuisance, what a
nuisance! I tell you this, grandchild, that you may not be looking after
him. What times these are! Why a paltry lodger like this, and he must be
pleasant looking too; it was very different in the old days!'"

"Grandmother was always regretting the old days--she was younger in old
days, and the sun was warmer in old days, and cream did not turn so sour
in old days--it was always the old days! I would sit still and hold my
tongue and think to myself: why did grandmother suggest it to me? Why
did she ask whether the lodger was young and good-looking? But that was
all, I just thought it, began counting my stitches again, went on
knitting my stocking, and forgot all about it.

"Well, one morning the lodger came in to see us; he asked about a
promise to paper his rooms. One thing led to another. Grandmother was
talkative, and she said: 'Go, Nastenka, into my bedroom and bring me my
reckoner.' I jumped up at once; I blushed all over, I don't know why,
and forgot I was sitting pinned to grandmother; instead of quietly
undoing the pin, so that the lodger should not see--I jumped so that
grandmother's chair moved. When I saw that the lodger knew all about me
now, I blushed, stood still as though I had been shot, and suddenly
began to cry--I felt so ashamed and miserable at that minute, that I
didn't know where to look! Grandmother called out, 'What are you waiting
for?' and I went on worse than ever. When the lodger saw, saw that I was
ashamed on his account, he bowed and went away at once!

"After that I felt ready to die at the least sound in the passage. 'It's
the lodger,' I kept thinking; I stealthily undid the pin in case. But it
always turned out not to be, he never came. A fortnight passed; the
lodger sent word through Fyokla that he had a great number of French
books, and that they were all good books that I might read, so would not
grandmother like me to read them that I might not be dull? Grandmother
agreed with gratitude, but kept asking if they were moral books, for if
the books were immoral it would be out of the question, one would learn
evil from them."

"'And what should I learn, grandmother? What is there written in them?'

"'Ah,' she said, 'what's described in them, is how young men seduce
virtuous girls; how, on the excuse that they want to marry them, they
carry them off from their parents' houses; how afterwards they leave
these unhappy girls to their fate, and they perish in the most pitiful
way. I read a great many books,' said grandmother, 'and it is all so
well described that one sits up all night and reads them on the sly. So
mind you don't read them, Nastenka,' said she. 'What books has he sent?'

"'They are all Walter Scott's novels, grandmother.'

"'Walter Scott's novels! But stay, isn't there some trick about it?
Look, hasn't he stuck a love-letter among them?'

"'No, grandmother,' I said, 'there isn't a love-letter.'

"'But look under the binding; they sometimes stuff it under the
bindings, the rascals!'

"'No, grandmother, there is nothing under the binding.'

"'Well, that's all right.'

"So we began reading Walter Scott, and in a month or so we had read
almost half. Then he sent us more and more. He sent us Pushkin, too; so
that at last I could not get on without a book and left off dreaming of
how fine it would be to marry a Chinese Prince.

"That's how things were when I chanced one day to meet our lodger on the
stairs. Grandmother had sent me to fetch something. He stopped, I
blushed and he blushed; he laughed, though, said good-morning to me,
asked after grandmother, and said, 'Well, have you read the books?' I
answered that I had. 'Which did you like best?' he asked. I said,
'Ivanhoe, and Pushkin best of all,' and so our talk ended for that time.

"A week later I met him again on the stairs. That time grandmother had
not sent me, I wanted to get something for myself. It was past two, and
the lodger used to come home at that time. 'Good-afternoon,' said he. I
said good-afternoon, too.

"'Aren't you dull,' he said, 'sitting all day with your grandmother?'

"When he asked that, I blushed, I don't know why; I felt ashamed, and
again I felt offended--I suppose because other people had begun to ask
me about that. I wanted to go away without answering, but I hadn't the
strength.

"'Listen,' he said, 'you are a good girl. Excuse my speaking to you like
that, but I assure you that I wish for your welfare quite as much as
your grandmother. Have you no friends that you could go and visit?'

"I told him I hadn't any, that I had had no friend but Mashenka, and she
had gone away to Pskov.

"'Listen,' he said, 'would you like to go to the theatre with me?'

"'To the theatre. What about grandmother?'

"'But you must go without your grandmother's knowing it,' he said.

"'No,' I said, 'I don't want to deceive grandmother. Good-bye.'

"'Well, good-bye,' he answered, and said nothing more.

"Only after dinner he came to see us; sat a long time talking to
grandmother; asked her whether she ever went out anywhere, whether she
had acquaintances, and suddenly said: 'I have taken a box at the opera
for this evening; they are giving _The Barber of Seville_. My friends
meant to go, but afterwards refused, so the ticket is left on my hands.'
'_The Barber of Seville_,' cried grandmother; 'why, the same they used
to act in old days?'

"'Yes, it's the same barber,' he said, and glanced at me. I saw what it
meant and turned crimson, and my heart began throbbing with suspense.

"'To be sure, I know it,' said grandmother; 'why, I took the part of
Rosina myself in old days, at a private performance!'

"'So wouldn't you like to go to-day?' said the lodger. 'Or my ticket
will be wasted.'

"'By all means let us go,' said grandmother; why shouldn't we? And my
Nastenka here has never been to the theatre.'

"My goodness, what joy! We got ready at once, put on our best clothes,
and set off. Though grandmother was blind, still she wanted to hear the
music; besides, she is a kind old soul, what she cared most for was to
amuse me, we should never have gone of ourselves.

"What my impressions of _The Barber of Seville_ were I won't tell you;
but all that evening our lodger looked at me so nicely, talked so
nicely, that I saw at once that he had meant to test me in the morning
when he proposed that I should go with him alone. Well, it was joy! I
went to bed so proud, so gay, my heart beat so that I was a little
feverish, and all night I was raving about _The Barber of Seville_.

"I expected that he would come and see us more and more often after
that, but it wasn't so at all. He almost entirely gave up coming. He
would just come in about once a month, and then only to invite us to the
theatre. We went twice again. Only I wasn't at all pleased with that; I
saw that he was simply sorry for me because I was so hardly treated by
grandmother, and that was all. As time went on, I grew more and more
restless, I couldn't sit still, I couldn't read, I couldn't work;
sometimes I laughed and did something to annoy grandmother, at another
time I would cry. At last I grew thin and was very nearly ill. The opera
season was over, and our lodger had quite given up coming to see us;
whenever we met--always on the same staircase, of course--he would bow
so silently, so gravely, as though he did not want to speak, and go down
to the front door, while I went on standing in the middle of the stairs,
as red as a cherry, for all the blood rushed to my head at the sight of
him.

"Now the end is near. Just a year ago, in May, the lodger came to us and
said to grandmother that he had finished his business here, and that he
must go back to Moscow for a year. When I heard that, I sank into a
chair half dead; grandmother did not notice anything; and having
informed us that he should be leaving us, he bowed and went away.

"What was I to do? I thought and thought and fretted and fretted, and at
last I made up my mind. Next day he was to go away, and I made up my
mind to end it all that evening when grandmother went to bed. And so it
happened. I made up all my clothes in a parcel--all the linen I
needed--and with the parcel in my hand, more dead than alive, went
upstairs to our lodger. I believe I must have stayed an hour on the
staircase. When I opened his door he cried out as he looked at me. He
thought I was a ghost, and rushed to give me some water, for I could
hardly stand up. My heart beat so violently that my head ached, and I
did not know what I was doing. When I recovered I began by laying my
parcel on his bed, sat down beside it, hid my face in my hands and went
into floods of tears. I think he understood it all at once, and looked
at me so sadly that my heart was torn.

"'Listen,' he began, 'listen, Nastenka, I can't do anything; I am a poor
man, for I have nothing, not even a decent berth. How could we live, if
I were to marry you?'

"We talked a long time; but at last I got quite frantic, I said I could
not go on living with grandmother, that I should run away from her, that
I did not want to be pinned to her, and that I would go to Moscow if he
liked, because I could not live without him. Shame and pride and love
were all clamouring in me at once, and I fell on the bed almost in
convulsions, I was so afraid of a refusal.

"He sat for some minutes in silence, then got up, came up to me and took
me by the hand.

"'Listen, my dear good Nastenka, listen; I swear to you that if I am
ever in a position to marry, you shall make my happiness. I assure you
that now you are the only one who could make me happy. Listen, I am
going to Moscow and shall be there just a year; I hope to establish my
position. When I come back, if you still love me, I swear that we will
be happy. Now it is impossible, I am not able, I have not the right to
promise anything. Well, I repeat, if it is not within a year it will
certainly be some time; that is, of course, if you do not prefer any one
else, for I cannot and dare not bind you by any sort of promise.'

"That was what he said to me, and next day he went away. We agreed
together not to say a word to grandmother: that was his wish. Well, my
history is nearly finished now. Just a year has past. He has arrived; he
has been here three days, and, and----"

"And what?" I cried, impatient to hear the end.

"And up to now has not shown himself!" answered Nastenka, as though
screwing up all her courage. "There's no sign or sound of him."

Here she stopped, paused for a minute, bent her head, and covering her
face with her hands broke into such sobs that it sent a pang to my heart
to hear them. I had not in the least expected such a _dénouement_.

"Nastenka," I began timidly in an ingratiating voice, "Nastenka! For
goodness' sake don't cry! How do you know? Perhaps he is not here
yet...."

"He is, he is," Nastenka repeated. "He is here, and I know it. We _made
an agreement_ at the time, that evening, before he went away: when we
said all that I have told you, and had come to an understanding, then we
came out here for a walk on this embankment. It was ten o'clock; we sat
on this seat. I was not crying then; it was sweet to me to hear what he
said.... And he said that he would come to us directly he arrived, and
if I did not refuse him, then we would tell grandmother about it all.
Now he is here, I know it, and yet he does not come!"

And again she burst into tears.

"Good God, can I do nothing to help you in your sorrow?" I cried jumping
up from the seat in utter despair. "Tell me, Nastenka, wouldn't it be
possible for me to go to him?"

"Would that be possible?" she asked suddenly, raising her head.

"No, of course not," I said pulling myself up; "but I tell you what,
write a letter."

"No, that's impossible, I can't do that," she answered with decision,
bending her head and not looking at me.

"How impossible--why is it impossible?" I went on, clinging to my idea.
"But, Nastenka, it depends what sort of letter; there are letters and
letters and.... Ah, Nastenka, I am right; trust to me, trust to me, I
will not give you bad advice. It can all be arranged! You took the first
step--why not now?"

"I can't. I can't! It would seem as though I were forcing myself on
him...."

"Ah, my good little Nastenka," I said, hardly able to conceal a smile;
"no, no, you have a right to, in fact, because he made you a promise.
Besides, I can see from everything that he is a man of delicate feeling;
that he behaved very well," I went on, more and more carried away by the
logic of my own arguments and convictions. "How did he behave? He bound
himself by a promise: he said that if he married at all he would marry
no one but you; he gave you full liberty to refuse him at once.... Under
such circumstances you may take the first step; you have the right; you
are in the privileged position--if, for instance, you wanted to free him
from his promise...."

"Listen; how would you write?"

"Write what?"

"This letter."

"I tell you how I would write: 'Dear Sir.'..."

"Must I really begin like that, 'Dear Sir'?"

"You certainly must! Though, after all, I don't know, I imagine...."

"Well, well, what next?"

"'Dear Sir,--I must apologize for----' But, no, there's no need to
apologize; the fact itself justifies everything. Write simply:--

    "'I am writing to you. Forgive me my impatience; but I have
    been happy for a whole year in hope; am I to blame for being
    unable to endure a day of doubt now? Now that you have come,
    perhaps you have changed your mind. If so, this letter is to
    tell you that I do not repine, nor blame you. I do not blame
    you because I have no power over your heart, such is my
    fate!

    "'You are an honourable man. You will not smile or be vexed
    at these impatient lines. Remember they are written by a
    poor girl; that she is alone; that she has no one to direct
    her, no one to advise her, and that she herself could never
    control her heart. But forgive me that a doubt has
    stolen--if only for one instant--into my heart. You are not
    capable of insulting, even in thought, her who so loved and
    so loves you.'"

"Yes, yes; that's exactly what I was thinking!" cried Nastenka, and her
eyes beamed with delight. "Oh, you have solved my difficulties: God has
sent you to me! Thank you, thank you!"

"What for? What for? For God's sending me?" I answered, looking
delighted at her joyful little face. "Why, yes; for that too."

"Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same
time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to
remember you all my life!"

"Well, enough, enough! But now I tell you what, listen: we made an
agreement then that as soon as he arrived he would let me know, by
leaving a letter with some good simple people of my acquaintance who
know nothing about it; or, if it were impossible to write a letter to
me, for a letter does not always tell everything, he would be here at
ten o'clock on the day he arrived, where we had arranged to meet. I know
he has arrived already; but now it's the third day, and there's no sign
of him and no letter. It's impossible for me to get away from
grandmother in the morning. Give my letter to-morrow to those kind
people I spoke to you about: they will send it on to him, and if there
is an answer you bring it to-morrow at ten o'clock."

"But the letter, the letter! You see, you must write the letter first!
So perhaps it must all be the day after to-morrow."

"The letter ..." said Nastenka, a little confused, "the letter ...
but...."

But she did not finish. At first she turned her little face away from
me, flushed like a rose, and suddenly I felt in my hand a letter which
had evidently been written long before, all ready and sealed up. A
familiar sweet and charming reminiscence floated through my mind.

"R, o--Ro; s, i--si; n, a--na," I began.

"Rosina!" we both hummed together; I almost embracing her with delight,
while she blushed as only she could blush, and laughed through the tears
which gleamed like pearls on her black eyelashes.

"Come, enough, enough! Good-bye now," she said speaking rapidly. "Here
is the letter, here is the address to which you are to take it.
Good-bye, till we meet again! Till to-morrow!"

She pressed both my hands warmly, nodded her head, and flew like an
arrow down her side street. I stood still for a long time following her
with my eyes.

"Till to-morrow! till to-morrow!" was ringing in my ears as she vanished
from my sight.


THIRD NIGHT

To-day was a gloomy, rainy day without a glimmer of sunlight, like the
old age before me. I am oppressed by such strange thoughts, such gloomy
sensations; questions still so obscure to me are crowding into my
brain--and I seem to have neither power nor will to settle them. It's
not for me to settle all this!

To-day we shall not meet. Yesterday, when we said good-bye, the clouds
began gathering over the sky and a mist rose. I said that to-morrow it
would be a bad day; she made no answer, she did not want to speak
against her wishes; for her that day was bright and clear, not one cloud
should obscure her happiness.

"If it rains we shall not see each other," she said, "I shall not come."

I thought that she would not notice to-day's rain, and yet she has not
come.

Yesterday was our third interview, our third white night....

But how fine joy and happiness makes any one! How brimming over with
love the heart is! One seems longing to pour out one's whole heart; one
wants everything to be gay, everything to be laughing. And how
infectious that joy is! There was such a softness in her words, such a
kindly feeling in her heart towards me yesterday.... How solicitous and
friendly she was; how tenderly she tried to give me courage! Oh, the
coquetry of happiness! While I ... I took it all for the genuine thing,
I thought that she....

But, my God, how could I have thought it? How could I have been so
blind, when everything had been taken by another already, when nothing
was mine; when, in fact, her very tenderness to me, her anxiety, her
love ... yes, love for me, was nothing else but joy at the thought of
seeing another man so soon, desire to include me, too, in her
happiness?... When he did not come, when we waited in vain, she frowned,
she grew timid and discouraged. Her movements, her words, were no longer
so light, so playful, so gay; and, strange to say, she redoubled her
attentiveness to me, as though instinctively desiring to lavish on me
what she desired for herself so anxiously, if her wishes were not
accomplished. My Nastenka was so downcast, so dismayed, that I think she
realized at last that I loved her, and was sorry for my poor love. So
when we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is
not destroyed but concentrated....

I went to meet her with a full heart, and was all impatience. I had no
presentiment that I should feel as I do now, that it would not all end
happily. She was beaming with pleasure; she was expecting an answer. The
answer was himself. He was to come, to run at her call. She arrived a
whole hour before I did. At first she giggled at everything, laughed at
every word I said. I began talking, but relapsed into silence.

"Do you know why I am so glad," she said, "so glad to look at you?--why
I like you so much to-day?"

"Well?" I asked, and my heart began throbbing.

"I like you because you have not fallen in love with me. You know that
some men in your place would have been pestering and worrying me, would
have been sighing and miserable, while you are so nice!"

Then she wrung my hand so hard that I almost cried out. She laughed.

"Goodness, what a friend you are!" she began gravely a minute later.
"God sent you to me. What would have happened to me if you had not been
with me now? How disinterested you are! How truly you care for me! When
I am married we will be great friends, more than brother and sister; I
shall care almost as I do for him...."

I felt horribly sad at that moment, yet something like laughter was
stirring in my soul.

"You are very much upset," I said; "you are frightened; you think he
won't come."

"Oh dear!" she answered; "if I were less happy, I believe I should cry
at your lack of faith, at your reproaches. However, you have made me
think and have given me a lot to think about; but I shall think later,
and now I will own that you are right. Yes, I am somehow not myself; I
am all suspense, and feel everything as it were too lightly. But hush!
that's enough about feelings...."

At that moment we heard footsteps, and in the darkness we saw a figure
coming towards us. We both started; she almost cried out; I dropped her
hand and made a movement as though to walk away. But we were mistaken,
it was not he.

"What are you afraid of? Why did you let go of my hand?" she said,
giving it to me again. "Come, what is it? We will meet him together; I
want him to see how fond we are of each other."

"How fond we are of each other!" I cried. ("Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka," I
thought, "how much you have told me in that saying! Such fondness at
_certain_ moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is
cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!... Oh, how
unbearable a happy person is sometimes! But I could not be angry with
you!")

At last my heart was too full.

"Listen, Nastenka!" I cried. "Do you know how it has been with me all
day."

"Why, how, how? Tell me quickly! Why have you said nothing all this
time?"

"To begin with, Nastenka, when I had carried out all your commissions,
given the letter, gone to see your good friends, then ... then I went
home and went to bed."

"Is that all?" she interrupted, laughing.

"Yes, almost all," I answered restraining myself, for foolish tears were
already starting into my eyes. "I woke an hour before our appointment,
and yet, as it were, I had not been asleep. I don't know what happened
to me. I came to tell you all about it, feeling as though time were
standing still, feeling as though one sensation, one feeling must remain
with me from that time for ever; feeling as though one minute must go on
for all eternity, and as though all life had come to a standstill for
me.... When I woke up it seemed as though some musical motive long
familiar, heard somewhere in the past, forgotten and voluptuously sweet,
had come back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been clamouring at
my heart all my life, and only now...."

"Oh my goodness, my goodness," Nastenka interrupted, "what does all that
mean? I don't understand a word."

"Ah, Nastenka, I wanted somehow to convey to you that strange
impression...." I began in a plaintive voice, in which there still lay
hid a hope, though a very faint one.

"Leave off. Hush!" she said, and in one instant the sly puss had
guessed.

Suddenly she became extraordinarily talkative, gay, mischievous; she
took my arm, laughed, wanted me to laugh too, and every confused word I
uttered evoked from her prolonged ringing laughter.... I began to feel
angry, she had suddenly begun flirting.

"Do you know," she began, "I feel a little vexed that you are not in
love with me? There's no understanding human nature! But all the same,
Mr. Unapproachable, you cannot blame me for being so simple; I tell you
everything, everything, whatever foolish thought comes into my head."

"Listen! That's eleven, I believe," I said as the slow chime of a bell
rang out from a distant tower. She suddenly stopped, left off laughing
and began to count.

"Yes, it's eleven," she said at last in a timid, uncertain voice.

I regretted at once that I had frightened her, making her count the
strokes, and I cursed myself for my spiteful impulse; I felt sorry for
her, and did not know how to atone for what I had done.

I began comforting her, seeking for reasons for his not coming,
advancing various arguments, proofs. No one could have been easier to
deceive than she was at that moment; and, indeed, any one at such a
moment listens gladly to any consolation, whatever it may be, and is
overjoyed if a shadow of excuse can be found.

"And indeed it's an absurd thing," I began, warming to my task and
admiring the extraordinary clearness of my argument, "why, he could not
have come; you have muddled and confused me, Nastenka, so that I too,
have lost count of the time.... Only think: he can scarcely have
received the letter; suppose he is not able to come, suppose he is going
to answer the letter, could not come before to-morrow. I will go for it
as soon as it's light to-morrow and let you know at once. Consider,
there are thousands of possibilities; perhaps he was not at home when
the letter came, and may not have read it even now! Anything may happen,
you know."

"Yes, yes!" said Nastenka. "I did not think of that. Of course anything
may happen?" she went on in a tone that offered no opposition, though
some other far-away thought could be heard like a vexatious discord in
it. "I tell you what you must do," she said, "you go as early as
possible to-morrow morning, and if you get anything let me know at once.
You know where I live, don't you?"

And she began repeating her address to me.

Then she suddenly became so tender, so solicitous with me. She seemed to
listen attentively to what I told her; but when I asked her some
question she was silent, was confused, and turned her head away. I
looked into her eyes--yes, she was crying.

"How can you? How can you? Oh, what a baby you are! what
childishness!... Come, come!"

She tried to smile, to calm herself, but her chin was quivering and her
bosom was still heaving.

"I was thinking about you," she said after a minute's silence. "You are
so kind that I should be a stone if I did not feel it. Do you know what
has occurred to me now? I was comparing you two. Why isn't he you? Why
isn't he like you? He is not as good as you, though I love him more than
you."

I made no answer. She seemed to expect me to say something.

"Of course, it may be that I don't understand him fully yet. You know I
was always as it were afraid of him; he was always so grave, as it were
so proud. Of course I know it's only that he seems like that, I know
there is more tenderness in his heart than in mine.... I remember how he
looked at me when I went in to him--do you remember?--with my bundle;
but yet I respect him too much, and doesn't that show that we are not
equals?"

"No, Nastenka, no," I answered, "it shows that you love him more than
anything in the world, and far more than yourself."

"Yes, supposing that is so," answered Nastenka naïvely. "But do you know
what strikes me now? Only I am not talking about him now, but speaking
generally; all this came into my mind some time ago. Tell me, how is it
that we can't all be like brothers together? Why is it that even the
best of men always seem to hide something from other people and to keep
something back? Why not say straight out what is in one's heart, when
one knows that one is not speaking idly? As it is every one seems
harsher than he really is, as though all were afraid of doing injustice
to their feelings, by being too quick to express them."

"Oh, Nastenka, what you say is true; but there are many reasons for
that," I broke in suppressing my own feelings at that moment more than
ever.

"No, no!" she answered with deep feeling. "Here you, for instance, are
not like other people! I really don't know how to tell you what I feel;
but it seems to me that you, for instance ... at the present moment ...
it seems to me that you are sacrificing something for me," she added
timidly, with a fleeting glance at me. "Forgive me for saying so, I am a
simple girl you know. I have seen very little of life, and I really
sometimes don't know how to say things," she added in a voice that
quivered with some hidden feeling, while she tried to smile; "but I only
wanted to tell you that I am grateful, that I feel it all too.... Oh,
may God give you happiness for it! What you told me about your dreamer
is quite untrue now--that is, I mean, it's not true of you. You are
recovering, you are quite a different man from what you described. If
you ever fall in love with some one, God give you happiness with her! I
won't wish anything for her, for she will be happy with you. I know, I
am a woman myself, so you must believe me when I tell you so."

She ceased speaking, and pressed my hand warmly. I too could not speak
without emotion. Some minutes passed.

"Yes, it's clear he won't come to-night," she said at last raising her
head. "It's late."

"He will come to-morrow," I said in the most firm and convincing tone.

"Yes," she added with no sign of her former depression. "I see for
myself now that he could not come till to-morrow. Well, good-bye, till
to-morrow. If it rains perhaps I shall not come. But the day after
to-morrow, I shall come. I shall come for certain, whatever happens; be
sure to be here, I want to see you, I will tell you everything."

And then when we parted she gave me her hand and said, looking at me
candidly: "We shall always be together, shan't we?"

Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!

As soon as it struck nine o'clock I could not stay indoors, but put on
my things, and went out in spite of the weather. I was there, sitting on
our seat. I went to her street, but I felt ashamed, and turned back
without looking at their windows, when I was two steps from her door. I
went home more depressed than I had ever been before. What a damp,
dreary day! If it had been fine I should have walked about all night....

But to-morrow, to-morrow! To-morrow she will tell me everything. The
letter has not come to-day, however. But that was to be expected. They
are together by now....


FOURTH NIGHT

My God, how it has all ended! What it has all ended in! I arrived at
nine o'clock. She was already there. I noticed her a good way off; she
was standing as she had been that first time, with her elbows on the
railing, and she did not hear me coming up to her.

"Nastenka!" I called to her, suppressing my agitation with an effort.

She turned to me quickly.

"Well?" she said. "Well? Make haste!"

I looked at her in perplexity.

"Well, where is the letter? Have you brought the letter?" she repeated
clutching at the railing.

"No, there is no letter," I said at last. "Hasn't he been to you yet?"
She turned fearfully pale and looked at me for a long time without
moving. I had shattered her last hope.

"Well, God be with him," she said at last in a breaking voice; "God be
with him if he leaves me like that."

She dropped her eyes, then tried to look at me and could not. For
several minutes she was struggling with her emotion. All at once she
turned away, leaning her elbows against the railing and burst into
tears.

"Oh don't, don't!" I began; but looking at her I had not the heart to go
on, and what was I to say to her?

"Don't try and comfort me," she said; "don't talk about him; don't tell
me that he will come, that he has not cast me off so cruelly and so
inhumanly as he has. What for--what for? Can there have been something
in my letter, that unlucky letter?"

At that point sobs stifled her voice; my heart was torn as I looked at
her.

"Oh, how inhumanly cruel it is!" she began again. "And not a line, not a
line! He might at least have written that he does not want me, that he
rejects me--but not a line for three days! How easy it is for him to
wound, to insult a poor, defenceless girl, whose only fault is that she
loves him! Oh, what I've suffered during these three days! Oh, dear!
When I think that I was the first to go to him, that I humbled myself
before him, cried, that I begged of him a little love!... and after
that! Listen," she said, turning to me, and her black eyes flashed, "it
isn't so! It can't be so; it isn't natural. Either you are mistaken or
I; perhaps he has not received the letter? Perhaps he still knows
nothing about it? How could any one--judge for yourself, tell me, for
goodness' sake explain it to me, I can't understand it--how could any
one behave with such barbarous coarseness as he has behaved to me? Not
one word! Why, the lowest creature on earth is treated more
compassionately. Perhaps he has heard something, perhaps some one has
told him something about me," she cried, turning to me inquiringly:
"What do you think?"

"Listen, Nastenka, I shall go to him to-morrow in your name."

"Yes?"

"I will question him about everything; I will tell him everything."

"Yes, yes?"

"You write a letter. Don't say no, Nastenka, don't say no! I will make
him respect your action, he shall hear all about it, and if----"

"No, my friend, no," she interrupted. "Enough! Not another word, not
another line from me--enough! I don't know him; I don't love him any
more. I will ... forget him."

She could not go on.

"Calm yourself, calm yourself! Sit here, Nastenka," I said, making her
sit down on the seat.

"I am calm. Don't trouble. It's nothing! It's only tears, they will soon
dry. Why, do you imagine I shall do away with myself, that I shall throw
myself into the river?"

My heart was full: I tried to speak, but I could not.

"Listen," she said taking my hand. "Tell me: you wouldn't have behaved
like this, would you? You would not have abandoned a girl who had come
to you of herself, you would not have thrown into her face a shameless
taunt at her weak foolish heart? You would have taken care of her? You
would have realized that she was alone, that she did not know how to
look after herself, that she could not guard herself from loving you,
that it was not her fault, not her fault--that she had done nothing....
Oh dear, oh dear!"

"Nastenka!" I cried at last, unable to control my emotion. "Nastenka,
you torture me! You wound my heart, you are killing me, Nastenka! I
cannot be silent! I must speak at last, give utterance to what is
surging in my heart!"

As I said this I got up from the seat. She took my hand and looked at me
in surprise.

"What is the matter with you?" she said at last.

"Listen," I said resolutely. "Listen to me, Nastenka! What I am going to
say to you now is all nonsense, all impossible, all stupid! I know that
this can never be, but I cannot be silent. For the sake of what you are
suffering now, I beg you beforehand to forgive me!"

"What is it? What is it?" she said drying her tears and looking at me
intently, while a strange curiosity gleamed in her astonished eyes.
"What is the matter?"

"It's impossible, but I love you, Nastenka! There it is! Now everything
is told," I said with a wave of my hand. "Now you will see whether you
can go on talking to me as you did just now, whether you can listen to
what I am going to say to you."...

"Well, what then?" Nastenka interrupted me. "What of it? I knew you
loved me long ago, only I always thought that you simply liked me very
much.... Oh dear, oh dear!"

"At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now! I am just in the
same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a
worse position than you, Nastenka, because he cared for no one else as
you do."

"What are you saying to me! I don't understand you in the least. But
tell me, what's this for; I don't mean what for, but why are you ... so
suddenly.... Oh dear, I am talking nonsense! But you...."

And Nastenka broke off in confusion. Her cheeks flamed; she dropped her
eyes.

"What's to be done, Nastenka, what am I to do? I am to blame. I have
abused your.... But no, no, I am not to blame, Nastenka; I feel that, I
know that, because my heart tells me I am right, for I cannot hurt you
in any way, I cannot wound you! I was your friend, but I am still your
friend, I have betrayed no trust. Here my tears are falling, Nastenka.
Let them flow, let them flow--they don't hurt anybody. They will dry,
Nastenka."

"Sit down, sit down," she said, making me sit down on the seat. "Oh, my
God!"

"No, Nastenka, I won't sit down; I cannot stay here any longer, you
cannot see me again; I will tell you everything and go away. I only want
to say that you would never have found out that I loved you. I should
have kept my secret. I would not have worried you at such a moment with
my egoism. No! But I could not resist it now; you spoke of it yourself,
it is your fault, your fault and not mine. You cannot drive me away from
you."...

"No, no, I don't drive you away, no!" said Nastenka, concealing her
confusion as best she could, poor child.

"You don't drive me away? No! But I meant to run from you myself. I will
go away, but first I will tell you all, for when you were crying here I
could not sit unmoved, when you wept, when you were in torture at
being--at being--I will speak of it, Nastenka--at being forsaken, at
your love being repulsed, I felt that in my heart there was so much love
for you, Nastenka, so much love! And it seemed so bitter that I could
not help you with my love, that my heart was breaking and I ... I could
not be silent, I had to speak, Nastenka, I had to speak!"

"Yes, yes! tell me, talk to me," said Nastenka with an indescribable
gesture. "Perhaps you think it strange that I talk to you like this, but
... speak! I will tell you afterwards! I will tell you everything."

"You are sorry for me, Nastenka, you are simply sorry for me, my dear
little friend! What's done can't be mended. What is said cannot be taken
back. Isn't that so? Well, now you know. That's the starting-point. Very
well. Now it's all right, only listen. When you were sitting crying I
thought to myself (oh, let me tell you what I was thinking!), I thought,
that (of course it cannot be, Nastenka), I thought that you ... I
thought that you somehow ... quite apart from me, had ceased to love
him. Then--I thought that yesterday and the day before yesterday,
Nastenka--then I would--I certainly would--have succeeded in making you
love me; you know, you said yourself, Nastenka, that you almost loved
me. Well, what next? Well, that's nearly all I wanted to tell you; all
that is left to say is how it would be if you loved me, only that,
nothing more! Listen, my friend--for any way you are my friend--I am, of
course, a poor, humble man, of no great consequence; but that's not the
point (I don't seem to be able to say what I mean, Nastenka, I am so
confused), only I would love you, I would love you so, that even if you
still loved him, even if you went on loving the man I don't know, you
would never feel that my love was a burden to you. You would only feel
every minute that at your side was beating a grateful, grateful heart, a
warm heart ready for your sake.... Oh Nastenka, Nastenka! What have you
done to me?"

"Don't cry; I don't want you to cry," said Nastenka getting up quickly
from the seat. "Come along, get up, come with me, don't cry, don't cry,"
she said, drying her tears with her handkerchief; "let us go now; maybe
I will tell you something.... If he has forsaken me now, if he has
forgotten me, though I still love him (I do not want to deceive you) ...
but listen, answer me. If I were to love you, for instance, that is, if
I only.... Oh my friend, my friend! To think, to think how I wounded
you, when I laughed at your love, when I praised you for not falling in
love with me. Oh dear! How was it I did not foresee this, how was it I
did not foresee this, how could I have been so stupid? But.... Well, I
have made up my mind, I will tell you."

"Look here, Nastenka, do you know what? I'll go away, that's what I'll
do. I am simply tormenting you. Here you are remorseful for having
laughed at me, and I won't have you ... in addition to your sorrow....
Of course it is my fault, Nastenka, but good-bye!"

"Stay, listen to me: can you wait?"

"What for? How?"

"I love him; but I shall get over it, I must get over it, I cannot fail
to get over it; I am getting over it, I feel that.... Who knows? Perhaps
it will all end to-day, for I hate him, for he has been laughing at me,
while you have been weeping here with me, for you have not repulsed me
as he has, for you love me while he has never loved me, for in fact, I
love you myself.... Yes, I love you! I love you as you love me; I have
told you so before, you heard it yourself--I love you because you are
better than he is, because you are nobler than he is, because, because
he----"

The poor girl's emotion was so violent that she could not say more; she
laid her head upon my shoulder, then upon my bosom, and wept bitterly. I
comforted her, I persuaded her, but she could not stop crying; she kept
pressing my hand, and saying between her sobs: "Wait, wait, it will be
over in a minute! I want to tell you ... you mustn't think that these
tears--it's nothing, it's weakness, wait till it's over."... At last she
left off crying, dried her eyes and we walked on again. I wanted to
speak, but she still begged me to wait. We were silent.... At last she
plucked up courage and began to speak.

"It's like this," she began in a weak and quivering voice, in which,
however, there was a note that pierced my heart with a sweet pang;
"don't think that I am so light and inconstant, don't think that I can
forget and change so quickly. I have loved him for a whole year, and I
swear by God that I have never, never, even in thought, been unfaithful
to him.... He has despised me, he has been laughing at me--God forgive
him! But he has insulted me and wounded my heart. I ... I do not love
him, for I can only love what is magnanimous, what understands me, what
is generous; for I am like that myself and he is not worthy of me--well,
that's enough of him. He has done better than if he had deceived my
expectations later, and shown me later what he was.... Well, it's over!
But who knows, my dear friend," she went on pressing my hand, "who
knows, perhaps my whole love was a mistaken feeling, a delusion--perhaps
it began in mischief, in nonsense, because I was kept so strictly by
grandmother? Perhaps I ought to love another man, not him, a different
man, who would have pity on me and ... and.... But don't let us say any
more about that," Nastenka broke off, breathless with emotion, "I only
wanted to tell you ... I wanted to tell you that if, although I love him
(no, did love him), if, in spite of this you still say.... If you feel
that your love is so great that it may at last drive from my heart my
old feeling--if you will have pity on me--if you do not want to leave me
alone to my fate, without hope, without consolation--if you are ready to
love me always as you do now--I swear to you that gratitude ... that my
love will be at last worthy of your love.... Will you take my hand?"

"Nastenka!" I cried breathless with sobs. "Nastenka, oh Nastenka!"

"Enough, enough! Well, now it's quite enough," she said, hardly able to
control herself. "Well, now all has been said, hasn't it! Hasn't it? You
are happy--I am happy too. Not another word about it, wait; spare me ...
talk of something else, for God's sake."

"Yes, Nastenka, yes! Enough about that, now I am happy. I---- Yes,
Nastenka, yes, let us talk of other things, let us make haste and talk.
Yes! I am ready."

And we did not know what to say: we laughed, we wept, we said thousands
of things meaningless and incoherent; at one moment we walked along the
pavement, then suddenly turned back and crossed the road; then we
stopped and went back again to the embankment; we were like children.

"I am living alone now, Nastenka," I began, "but to-morrow! Of course
you know, Nastenka, I am poor, I have only got twelve hundred roubles,
but that doesn't matter."

"Of course not, and granny has her pension, so she will be no burden. We
must take granny."

"Of course we must take granny. But there's Matrona."

"Yes, and we've got Fyokla too!"

"Matrona is a good woman, but she has one fault: she has no imagination,
Nastenka, absolutely none; but that doesn't matter."

"That's all right--they can live together; only you must move to us
to-morrow."

"To you? How so? All right, I am ready."

"Yes, hire a room from us. We have a top floor, it's empty. We had an
old lady lodging there, but she has gone away; and I know granny would
like to have a young man. I said to her, 'Why a young man?' And she
said, 'Oh, because I am old; only don't you fancy, Nastenka, that I want
him as a husband for you.' So I guessed it was with that idea."

"Oh, Nastenka!"

And we both laughed.

"Come, that's enough, that's enough. But where do you live? I've
forgotten."

"Over that way, near X bridge, Barannikov's Buildings."

"It's that big house?"

"Yes, that big house."

"Oh, I know, a nice house; only you know you had better give it up and
come to us as soon as possible."

"To-morrow, Nastenka, to-morrow; I owe a little for my rent there but
that doesn't matter. I shall soon get my salary."

"And do you know I will perhaps give lessons; I will learn something
myself and then give lessons."

"Capital! And I shall soon get a bonus."

"So by to-morrow you will be my lodger."

"And we will go to _The Barber of Seville_, for they are soon going to
give it again."

"Yes, we'll go," said Nastenka, "but better see something else and not
_The Barber of Seville_."

"Very well, something else. Of course that will be better, I did not
think----"

As we talked like this we walked along in a sort of delirium, a sort of
intoxication, as though we did not know what was happening to us. At one
moment we stopped and talked for a long time at the same place; then we
went on again, and goodness knows where we went; and again tears and
again laughter. All of a sudden Nastenka would want to go home, and I
would not dare to detain her but would want to see her to the house; we
set off, and in a quarter of an hour found ourselves at the embankment
by our seat. Then she would sigh, and tears would come into her eyes
again; I would turn chill with dismay.... But she would press my hand
and force me to walk, to talk, to chatter as before.

"It's time I was home at last; I think it must be very late," Nastenka
said at last. "We must give over being childish."

"Yes, Nastenka, only I shan't sleep to-night; I am not going home."

"I don't think I shall sleep either; only see me home."

"I should think so!"

"Only this time we really must get to the house."

"We must, we must."

"Honour bright? For you know one must go home some time!"

"Honour bright," I answered laughing.

"Well, come along!"

"Come along! Look at the sky, Nastenka. Look! To-morrow it will be a
lovely day; what a blue sky, what a moon! Look; that yellow cloud is
covering it now, look, look! No, it has passed by. Look, look!"

But Nastenka did not look at the cloud; she stood mute as though turned
to stone; a minute later she huddled timidly close up to me. Her hand
trembled in my hand; I looked at her. She pressed still more closely to
me.

At that moment a young man passed by us. He suddenly stopped, looked at
us intently, and then again took a few steps on. My heart began
throbbing.

"Who is it, Nastenka?" I said in an undertone.

"It's he," she answered in a whisper, huddling up to me, still more
closely, still more tremulously.... I could hardly stand on my feet.

"Nastenka, Nastenka! It's you!" I heard a voice behind us and at the
same moment the young man took several steps towards us.

My God, how she cried out! How she started! How she tore herself out of
my arms and rushed to meet him! I stood and looked at them, utterly
crushed. But she had hardly given him her hand, had hardly flung herself
into his arms, when she turned to me again, was beside me again in a
flash, and before I knew where I was she threw both arms round my neck
and gave me a warm, tender kiss. Then, without saying a word to me, she
rushed back to him again, took his hand, and drew him after her.

I stood a long time looking after them. At last the two vanished from my
sight.


MORNING

My night ended with the morning. It was a wet day. The rain was falling
and beating disconsolately upon my window pane; it was dark in the room
and grey outside. My head ached and I was giddy; fever was stealing over
my limbs.

"There's a letter for you, sir; the postman brought it," Matrona said
stooping over me.

"A letter? From whom?" I cried jumping up from my chair.

"I don't know, sir, better look--maybe it is written there whom it is
from."

I broke the seal. It was from her!

       *     *     *     *     *

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I beg you on my knees to forgive me! I
deceived you and myself. It was a dream, a mirage.... My heart aches for
you to-day; forgive me, forgive me!

"Don't blame me, for I have not changed to you in the least. I told you
that I would love you, I love you now, I more than love you. Oh, my God!
If only I could love you both at once! Oh, if only you were he!"

["Oh, if only he were you," echoed in my mind. I remembered your words,
Nastenka!]

"God knows what I would do for you now! I know that you are sad and
dreary. I have wounded you, but you know when one loves a wrong is soon
forgotten. And you love me.

"Thank you, yes, thank you for that love! For it will live in my memory
like a sweet dream which lingers long after awakening; for I shall
remember for ever that instant when you opened your heart to me like a
brother and so generously accepted the gift of my shattered heart to
care for it, nurse it, and heal it.... If you forgive me, the memory of
you will be exalted by a feeling of everlasting gratitude which will
never be effaced from my soul.... I will treasure that memory: I will be
true to it, I will not betray it, I will not betray my heart: it is too
constant. It returned so quickly yesterday to him to whom it has always
belonged.

"We shall meet, you will come to us, you will not leave us, you will be
for ever a friend, a brother to me. And when you see me you will give me
your hand ... yes? You will give it to me, you have forgiven me, haven't
you? You love me _as before_?

"Oh, love me, do not forsake me, because I love you so at this moment,
because I am worthy of your love, because I will deserve it ... my dear!
Next week I am to be married to him. He has come back in love, he has
never forgotten me. You will not be angry at my writing about him. But I
want to come and see you with him; you will like him, won't you?

          "Forgive me, remember and love your
                        "NASTENKA."

       *     *     *     *     *

I read that letter over and over again for a long time; tears gushed to
my eyes. At last it fell from my hands and I hid my face.

"Dearie! I say, dearie----" Matrona began.

"What is it, Matrona?"

"I have taken all the cobwebs off the ceiling; you can have a wedding or
give a party."

I looked at Matrona. She was still a hearty, _youngish_ old woman, but I
don't know why all at once I suddenly pictured her with lustreless eyes,
a wrinkled face, bent, decrepit.... I don't know why I suddenly pictured
my room grown old like Matrona. The walls and the floors looked
discoloured, everything seemed dingy; the spiders' webs were thicker
than ever. I don't know why, but when I looked out of the window it
seemed to me that the house opposite had grown old and dingy too, that
the stucco on the columns was peeling off and crumbling, that the
cornices were cracked and blackened, and that the walls, of a vivid deep
yellow, were patchy.

Either the sunbeams suddenly peeping out from the clouds for a moment
were hidden again behind a veil of rain, and everything had grown dingy
again before my eyes; or perhaps the whole vista of my future flashed
before me so sad and forbidding, and I saw myself just as I was now,
fifteen years hence, older, in the same room, just as solitary, with the
same Matrona grown no cleverer for those fifteen years.

But to imagine that I should bear you a grudge, Nastenka! That I should
cast a dark cloud over your serene, untroubled happiness; that by my
bitter reproaches I should cause distress to your heart, should poison
it with secret remorse and should force it to throb with anguish at the
moment of bliss; that I should crush a single one of those tender
blossoms which you have twined in your dark tresses when you go with him
to the altar.... Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet
smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment
of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful
heart!

My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of
a man's life?




  NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND[1]
  A NOVEL

  PART I
  UNDERGROUND


I

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
any one 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!

    [Footnote 1: 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.]

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 always 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 life-time; 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 am
I--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, every one does do that; people do pride themselves on
their diseases, and I do, may be, more than any one. 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 "good 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 "good 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 realize 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
tranquillizing, 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 cætera, et cætera. 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 vérité_. 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 vérité_. 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 recognized 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 recognize 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 Vagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
some one 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 some one 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
civilization, 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 any one 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
every one 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 realize 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 to-morrow, 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 good
and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That
"good 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 "good 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 "good and beautiful." I should then have turned
everything into the good and the beautiful; in the nastiest,
unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the good 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 "good and beautiful." An author has written _As you will_: at
once I drink to the health of "any one you will" because I love all that
is "good and beautiful."

I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute any one 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 every one
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 great 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 shortsighted 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 ... as to
affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilization
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 civilization softens in us? The only gain of
civilization 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 civilized 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 civilization 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 encyclopædic 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, _à 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, gentlemen, 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 some one 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 such 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't 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, he 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 apologizing 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 realize it at all costs. Let me explain.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to every one, 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, some one 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 apologize?

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 criticize myself and improve
my style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from writing.
To-day, 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 to-day, 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 _à
propos_ of the falling snow.




  PART II

  À 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 any one, and I 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 any one 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 every one. 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 any one. 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 any one 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 any one else. "I am alone and they are
_every one_," 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, _à 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 any one, 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 good 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 good 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 recognized. 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
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 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 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 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 every one 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

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