You're always saying "accident, accident...." That's just the point.
What I want to say is that on every merest accident it is possible to
look more deeply.
Permit me to remark that I am already sixty years old. And this is
just the age when, after all the noisy passions of his youth, a man
must choose one of three ways of life: money-making, ambition, or
philosophy. For my part I think there are only two paths. Ambition
must, sooner or later, take the form of getting something for
oneself--money or power--in acquiring and extending either earthly or
heavenly possibilities.
I don't dare to call myself a philosopher, that's too high-flown a
title for me ... it doesn't go with my character. I'm the sort of
person who might anytime be called upon to show his credentials. But
all the same, my life has been extremely broad and very varied. I have
seen riches and poverty and sickness, war and the loss of friends,
prison, love, ruin, faith, unbelief. And I've even--believe it or
not, as you please--I've even seen _people._ Perhaps you think that a
foolish remark? But it's not. For one man to see another and understand
him, he must first of all forget his own personality, forget to
consider what impression he himself is making on his neighbours and
what a fine figure he cuts in the world. There are very few who can see
other people, I assure you.
Well, here I am, a sinful man, and in my declining years I love to
ponder upon life. I am old, and solitary as well, and you can't think
how long the nights are to us old folk. My heart and my memory have
preserved for me thousands of living recollections--of myself and of
others. But it's one thing to chew the cud of recollection as a cow
chews nettles, and quite another to consider things with wisdom and
judgment. And that's what I call philosophy.
We've been talking of accident and fate. I quite agree with you that
the happenings of life seem senseless, capricious, blind, aimless,
simply foolish. But over them all--that is, over millions of happenings
interwoven together, there reigns--I am perfectly certain of this--an
inexorable law. Everything passes and returns again, is born again out
of a little thing, out of nothing, burns and tortures itself, rejoices,
reaches a height and falls, and then returns again and again, as if
twining itself about the spiral curve of the flight of time. And this
spiral having been accomplished, it in its turn winds back again for
many years, returning and passing over its former place, and then
making a new curve--a spiral of spirals.... And so on without end.
Of course you'll say that if this law is really in existence people
would long ago have discovered it and would be able to define its
course and make a kind of map of it. No, I don't think so. We are
like weavers, sitting close up to an infinitely long and infinitely
broad web. There are certain colours before our eyes, flowers, blues,
purples, greens, all moving, moving and passing ... but because we're
so near to it we can't make out the pattern. Only those who are able
to stand above life, higher than we do, gentle scholars, prophets,
dreamers, saints and poets, these may have occasional glimpses through
the confusion of life, and their keen inspired gaze may see the
beginnings of a harmonious design, and may divine its end.
You think I express myself extravagantly? Don't you now? But wait a
little; perhaps I can put it more clearly. You musn't let me bore you,
though.... Yet what can one do on a railway journey except talk?
I agree that there are laws of Nature governing alike in their wisdom
the courses of the stars and the digestion of beetles. I believe in
such laws and I revere them. But there is _Something_ or _Somebody_
stronger than Fate, greater than the world. If it is _Something,_ I
should call it the law of logical absurdity, or of absurd logicality,
just as you please.... I can't express myself very well. If it is
_Somebody,_ then it must be someone in comparison with whom our
biblical devil and our romantic Satan are but puny jesters and harmless
rogues.
Imagine to yourself an almost godlike Power over this world, having a
desperate childish love of playing tricks, knowing neither good nor
evil, but always mercilessly hard, sagacious, and, devil take it all,
somehow strangely just. You don't understand, perhaps? Then let me
illustrate my meaning by examples.
Take Napoleon: a marvellous life, an almost impossibly great
personality, inexhaustible power, and look at his end--on a tiny
island, suffering from disease of the bladder, complaining of the
doctors, of his food, senile grumblings in solitude.... Of course,
this pitiful end was simply a mocking laugh, a derisive smile on
the face of my mysterious _Somebody._ But consider this tragic
biography thoughtfully, putting aside all the explanations of learned
people--they would explain it all simply in accordance with law--and I
don't know how it will appear to you, but here I see clearly existing
together this mixture of absurdity and logicality, and I cannot
possibly explain it to myself.
Then General Skobelef. A great, a splendid figure. Desperate courage,
and a kind of exaggerated belief in his own destiny. He always mocked
at death, went into a murderous fire of the enemy with bravado, and
courted endless risks in a kind of unappeasable thirst for danger.
And see--he died on a common bed, in a hired room in the company of
prostitutes. Again I say: absurd, cruel, yet somehow logical. It is
as if each of these pitiful deaths by their contrast with the life,
rounded off, blended, completed, two splendid beings.
The ancients knew and feared this mysterious _Someone_--you remember
the ring of Polycrates--but they mistook his jest for the envy of Fate.
I assure you--_i.e.,_ I don't assure _you,_ but I am deeply assured
of it myself--that sometime or other, perhaps after thirty thousand
years, life on this earth will have become marvellously beautiful.
There will be palaces, gardens, fountains.... The burdens now borne
by mankind--slavery, private ownership of property, lies, and
oppression--will cease. There will be no more sickness, disorder,
death; no more envy, no vice, no near or far, all will have become
brothers, And then _He_--you notice that even in speaking I pronounce
the name with a capital letter--He, passing one day through the
universe, will look on us, frown evilly, smile, and then breathe upon
the world--and the good old Earth will cease to be. A sad end for
this beautiful planet, eh? But just think to what a terrible bloody
orgiastic end universal virtue might lead, if once people succeeded in
getting thoroughly surfeited by it!
However, what's the use of taking such great examples as our earth,
Napoleon, and the ancient Greeks? I myself have, from time to time,
caught a glimpse of this strange and inscrutable law in the most
ordinary occurrences. If you like, I'll tell you a simple incident when
I myself clearly felt the mocking breath of this god.
I was travelling by train from Tomsk to Petersburg in an ordinary
first-class compartment. One of my companions on the journey was a
young civil engineer, a very short, stout, good-natured young man:
a simple Russian face, round, well-cared for, white eyebrows and
eyelashes, sparse hair brushed up from his forehead, showing the red
skin beneath ... a kind, good "Yorkshireman." His eyes were like the
dull blue eyes of a sucking pig.
He proved a very pleasant companion. I have rarely seen anyone with
such engaging manners. He at once gave me his lower sleeping-place,
helped me to place my trunk on the rack, and was generally so kind that
he even made me feel a little awkward. When we stopped at a station he
bought wine and food, and had evidently great pleasure in persuading
the company to share them with him.
I saw at once that he was bubbling over with some great inward
happiness, and that he was desirous of seeing all around him as happy
as he was.
And this proved to be the case. In ten minutes he had already began
to open his heart to me. Certainly I noticed that directly he spoke
of himself the other people in the carriage seemed to wriggle in
their seats and take an exaggerated interest in observing the passing
landscape. Later on, I realised that each of them had heard the story
at least a dozen times before. And now my turn had come.
The engineer had come from the Far East, where he had been living
for five years, and consequently he had not seen his family in
Petersburg for five years. He had thought to dispatch his business
in a year at the most, but at first official duties had kept him,
then certain profitable enterprises had turned up, and after it
had seemed impossible to leave a business which had become so very
large and remunerative. Now everything had been wound up and he was
returning home. Who could blame him for his talkativeness; to have
lived for five years far from a beloved home, and come back young,
healthy, successful, with a heart full of unspent love! What man could
have imposed silence upon himself, or overcome that fearful itch of
impatience, increasing with every hour, with every passing hundred
versts?
I soon learnt from him all about his family. His wife's name was
Susannah or Sannochka, and his daughter bore the outlandish name of
Yurochka. He had left her a little three-year-old girl, and "Just
imagine!" cried he, "now she must be quite grown up, almost ready to be
married."
He told me his wife's maiden name, and of the poverty they had
experienced together in their early married days, when he had been a
student in his last year, and had not even a second pair of trousers to
wear, and what a splendid companion, nurse, mother, and sister in one,
his wife had been to him then.
He struck his breast with his clenched fist, his face reddened with
pride, and his eyes flashed, as he cried:
"If only you knew her! A be-eauty! If you're in Petersburg I must
introduce you to her. You must certainly come and see us there, you
must, indeed, without any ceremony or excuse, Kirochnaya 156. I'll
introduce you to her, and you'll see my old woman for yourself. A
Queen! She was always the _belle_ at our civil-engineers' balls. You
must come and see us, I swear, or I shall be offended."
And he gave us each one of his visiting cards on which he had pencilled
out his Manchurian address, and written in the Petersburg one, telling
us at the same time that his sumptuous flat had been taken by his wife
only a year ago--he had insisted on it when his business had reached
its height.
Yes, his talk was like a waterfall. Four times a day, when we stopped
at important stations, he would send home a reply-paid telegram to
be delivered to him at the next big stopping-place or simply on the
train, addressed to such and such a number, first-class passenger.
So-and-so.... And you ought to have seen him when the conductor came
along shouting in a sing-song tone "Telegram for first-class passenger
So-and-so." I assure you there was a shining halo round his head
like that of the holy saints. He tipped the conductors royally, and
not the conductors only either. He had an insatiable desire to give
to everybody, to make people happy, to caress them. He gave us all
souvenirs, knicknacks made out of Siberian and Ural stones, trinkets,
studs, pins, Chinese rings, jade images, and other trifles. Among them
were many things that were very valuable, some on account of their
cost, others for their rare and artistic work, yet, do you know, it was
impossible to refuse them, though one felt embarrassed and awkward in
receiving such valuable gifts--he begged us to accept them with such
earnestness and insistence, just as one cannot continue to refuse a
child who continues to ask one to take a sweet.
He had with him in his boxes and in his hand luggage a whole store of
things, all gifts for Sannochka and Yurochka. Wonderful things they
were--priceless Chinese dresses, ivory, gold, miniatures in sardonyx,
furs, painted fans, lacquered boxes, albums--and you ought to have seen
and heard the tenderness and the rapture with which he spoke of his new
ones, when he showed us these gifts. His love may have been somewhat
blind, too noisy, and egotistical, perhaps even a little hysterical,
but I swear that through these formal and trivial veilings I could see
a great and genuine love--love at a sharp and painful tension.
I remember, too, how at one of the stations when another waggon was
being attached to the train, a pointsman had his foot cut off. There
was great excitement, all the passengers went to look at the injured
man--and people travelling by train are the most empty-headed, the
wildest, the most cruel in the world. The engineer did not stay in
the crowd, he went quietly up to the station-master, talked with
him for a few moments, and then handed him a note for a sum of
money--not a small amount, I expect, for the official cap was lifted in
acknowledgment with the greatest respect. He did this very quickly; no
one but myself saw his action, but I have eyes that notice such things.
And I saw also that he took advantage of the longer stoppage of the
train and succeeded in sending off a telegram.
I can see him now as he walked across the platform--his white
engineer's cap pushed to the back of his head; his long blouse of fine
tussore, with collar fastening at the side; over one shoulder the strap
of his field-glasses, and crossing it, over the other shoulder, the
strap of his dispatch-case--coming out of the telegraph office and
looking so fresh and plump and strong with such a clear complexion, and
the look of a well-fed, simple, country lad.
And at almost every big station he received a telegram. He quite spoilt
the conductors--running himself to the office to inquire if there was
no message for him. Poor boy! He could not keep his joy to himself,
but read his telegrams aloud to us, as if we had nothing else to think
about except his family happiness--"Hope you are well. We send kisses
and await your arrival impatiently.--SANNOCHKA, YUROCHKA." Or: "With
watch in hand we follow on the timetable the course of your train from
station to station. Our spirits and thoughts are with you." All the
telegrams were of this kind. There was even one like this: "Put your
watch to Petersburg time, and exactly at eleven o'clock look at the
star Alpha in the Great Bear. I will do the same."
There was one passenger on the train who was owner or bookkeeper, or
manager of a gold mine, a Siberian, with a face like that of Moses
the Moor,[1] dry and elongated, thick, black, stern brows, and a long,
full, greyish beard--a man who looked as if he were exceptionally
experienced in all the trials of life. He made a warning remark to the
engineer:
[1] One of the hermits of the Egyptian Desert, a saint in the Russian
Calendar.
"You know, young man, it's no use you abusing the telegraph service in
such a way."
"What do you mean? How is it no use?"
"Well, it's impossible for a woman to keep herself all the time in such
an exalted and wound-up state of mind. You ought to have mercy on other
peoples' nerves."
But the engineer only laughed and clapped the wiseacre on the knee.
"Ah, little father, I know you, you people of the Old Testament. You're
always stealing back home unexpectedly and on the quiet. 'Is everything
as it should be on the domestic hearth?' Eh?"
But the man with the ikon face only raised his eyebrows and smiled.
"Well, what of it? Sometimes there's no harm in that."
At Nizhni we had new fellow-travellers, and at Moscow new ones again.
The agitation of my engineer was still increasing. What could be done
with him? He made acquaintance with everybody; talked to married folks
of the sacredness of home, reproached bachelors for the slovenliness
and disorder of bachelor life, talked to young ladies about a single
and eternal love, conversed with mothers about their children, and
always led the conversation to talk about his Sannochka and Yurochka.
Even now I remember that his daughter used to lisp: "I have thome
yellow thlipperth," and the like. And once, when she was pulling
the cat's tail, and the cat mewed, her mother said, "Don't do that,
Yurochka, you're hurting the cat," and the child answered, "No, mother,
it liketh it."
It was all very tender, very touching, but, I'm bound to confess, a
little tiresome.
Next morning we were nearing Petersburg. It was a dull, wet, unpleasant
day. There was not exactly a fog, but a kind of dirty cloudiness
enveloped the rusty, thin-looking pines, and the wet hills looked like
hairy warts extending on both sides of the line. I got up early and
went along to the lavatory to wash; on the way I ran into the engineer,
he was standing by the window and looking alternately at his watch and
then out of the window.
"Good morning," said I. "What are you doing?"
"Oh, good morning," said he. "I'm just testing the speed of the train;
it's going about sixty versts an hour."
"You test it by your watch?"
"Yes, it's very simple. You see, there are twenty-five sazhens between
the posts--a twentieth part of a verst. Therefore, if we travel these
twenty-five sazhens in four seconds, it means we are going forty-five
versts an hour; if in three seconds, we're going sixty versts an hour;
if in two seconds, ninety. But you can reckon the speed without a watch
if you know how to count the seconds--you must count as quickly as
possible, but quite distinctly, one, two, three, four, five, six--one,
two, three, four, five, six--that's a _speciality_ of the Austrian
General Staff."
He talked on, with fidgety movements and restless eyes, and I knew
quite well, of course, that all this talk about the counting of
the Austrian General Staff was all beside the point, just a simple
diversion of his to cheat his impatience.
It became dreadful to watch him after we had passed the station of
Luban. He looked to me paler and thinner, and, in a way, older. He even
stopped talking. He pretended to read a newspaper, but it was evident
that it was a tiresome and distasteful occupation for him; sometimes
he even held the paper upside down. He would sit still for about five
minutes, then go to the window, sit down for a while and seem as if he
were trying to push the train forward, then go again to the window and
test the speed of the train, again turning his head, first to the right
and then to the left. I know--who doesn't know?--that days and weeks of
expectation are as nothing in comparison with those last half-hours,
with the last quarter of an hour.
But at last the signal-box, the endless network of crossing rails, and
then the long wooden platform edged with a row of porters in white
aprons.... The engineer put on his coat, took his bag in his hand, and
went along the corridor to the door of the train. I was looking out of
the window to hail a porter as soon as the train stopped. I could see
the engineer very well, he had got outside the door on to the step.
He noticed me, nodded, and smiled, but it struck me, even at that
distance, how pale he was.
A tall lady in a sort of silvery bodice and a large velvet hat and blue
veil went past our carriage. A little girl in a short frock, with long,
white-gaitered legs, was with her. They were both looking for someone,
and anxiously scanning every window. But they passed him over. I heard
the engineer cry out in a strange, choking, trembling voice:
"Sannochka!"
I think they both turned round. And then, suddenly a sharp and dreadful
wail.... I shall never forget it. A cry of perplexity, terror, pain,
lamentation, like nothing else I've ever heard.
The next second I saw the engineer's head, without a cap, somewhere
between the lower part of the train and the platform. I couldn't see
his face, only his bright upstanding hair and the pinky flesh beneath,
but only for a moment, it flashed past me and was gone....
Afterwards they questioned me as a witness. I remember how I tried
to calm the wife, but what could one say in such a case? I saw him,
too--a distorted red lump of flesh. He was dead when they got him out
from under the train. I heard afterwards that his leg had been severed
first, and as he was trying instinctively to save himself, he fell
under the train, and his whole body was crushed under the wheels.
But now I'm coming to the most dreadful point of my story. In those
terrible, never-to-be-forgotten moments I had a strange consciousness
which would not leave me. "It's a stupid death," I thought, "absurd,
cruel, unjust," but why, from the very first moment that I heard his
cry, why did it seem clear to me that the thing must happen, and that
it was somehow natural and logical? Why was it? Can you explain it? Was
it not that I felt here the careless indifferent smile of my devil?
His widow--I visited her afterwards, and she asked me many questions
about him--said that they both had tempted Fate by their impatient
love, in their certainty of meeting, in their sureness of the morrow.
Perhaps so.... I can't say.... In the East, that tried well of ancient
wisdom, a man never says that he intends to do something either to-day
or to-morrow without adding "_Insh-Allah,_" which means, "In the name
of God," or "If God will."
And yet I don't think that there was here a tempting of Fate, it seemed
to me just the absurd logic of a mysterious god. Greater joy than
their mutual expectation, when, in spite of distance, their souls met
together--greater joy, perhaps, these two would never have experienced!
God knows what might have awaited them later! Dischantment? Weariness?
Boredom? Perhaps hate?