Well--then! let us discourse for your profit and edification ... I'll
begin with papa. My papa was a stern and conscientious man, just
touching upon his sixtieth year, on half-pay, and he settled down
in a little country town where he bought himself a little house. My
mamma was a woman with a kind heart and generous blood.... For me,
at any rate, he had no respect. For every trifle he made me kneel in
a corner and lambed into me with a strap. But mamma loved me, and
it was pleasant to live with her.... At the time papa moved into the
little provincial town, I was in the sixth class of the Gymnasium, but
I was expelled from it shortly afterwards for getting mixed up with
the teacher of physics.... I ought to have taken my lessons in physics
from this teacher, and I took them instead from the head master's
chambermaid. The head master was very angry with me for this, and drove
me away to papa. I appeared before him, and explained that here I was
expelled from the Temple of Learning because of a misunderstanding
with the head master. But the head master had taken the precaution of
informing my father of the whole affair by letter, so that the moment
papa beheld me he began scolding me with all sorts of nasty words, and
mamma did ditto. When they were tired of scolding me they resolved to
send me away to Pskov, where papa had a brother living. So they're
sending me to Pskov, I said to myself; well, uncle is stupid and savage
enough, but my dear little cousins are nice and kind, so life will
be possible there anyhow. But even at Pskov it soon appeared that I
had no friends at court, so to speak. In three months uncle turned me
out, accusing me of immoral conduct, and having a bad influence on his
daughters. Again I was scolded, and again I was banished, this time
to the country, to the house of an aunt who lived in the Government
of Ryazan. My auntie seemed to be a glorious and good-natured old
lady, who always had heaps of young people about her. But at that
time everyone was infected by the foolish habit of reading forbidden
books--and suddenly I found myself in gaol, where I suppose I must
have remained three or four months. Mamma thereupon instructed me by
letter that I had killed her; papa informed me that I had dishonoured
him--what very tiresome parents it was my fate to have!
You know that if a man were free to choose his own parents it would
be a much more convenient arrangement than the present order of
things--now, wouldn't it? Well, well! They let me out of prison, and
I went to Nijni-Novgorod, where I had a married sister. But my sister
appeared to be overwhelmed by family cares, and very ill-humoured on
that account. What was I to do? Just at the nick of time Mass was being
celebrated, and I joined the choir of singers. My voice was good, I
had a handsome exterior, they promoted me to the rank of solo-singer,
and I sang all by myself. You imagine, I suppose, that I must have
taken to drink on this occasion. No, even now I hardly ever drink
vodka, only sometimes, and that very rarely--by way of warming myself.
A drunkard I never was; of course I have had my fill when good wines
were going--champagne for instance, and if you gave me Marsala, lots of
it I mean, I should undoubtedly get drunk upon it, for I love it as I
love women Women I love to frenzy--and perhaps I hate 'em too, for in
the end I always feel an irresistible desire to play them some dirty
trick.... Well, well! _Why_ I feel so mad with them sometimes I do not
know and cannot explain to myself. They have always been gracious to
me, for I was handsome and bold. But they're such ties! Well, the deuce
take them for what I care. I love to hear them cry and groan--for then
I always think: Aha! now you are having your deserts.
However, there was I singing away, I cared not what, so long as I had
a merry life. Then, one day, I was suddenly accosted by a clean-shaven
man who appeared before me and said: "Have you ever tried acting on the
stage?" Well, I had played a part in domestic spectacles. "Would you
like to earn twenty-five roubles[1] a month for playing light-comedy
parts?" "All right!" said I. So off we went to the town of Perm. At
Perm I played and sang in comic operas made up as a passionate dark
young chap--with a past, the past of a political offender. The ladies
were in raptures. Then I took the second lover rôles. "Try the heroic
parts," they said to me. So I played the part of Max in "Errant Fires,"
and it went off capitally--I knew it I played through a whole season
That summer our tour was a great success. We played at Vyatka, we
played at Ufa, we even played at Elabuga. In the winter we returned to
Perm.
[1] £2 10s.
And in that winter I felt a hatred and loathing of mankind. You know
how it is. You appear on the stage, and you see hundreds of fools and
wretches with their eyes fixed full upon you--that slavish cowardly
shudder (I know it so well) runs all down your back, and you have the
prickly sensation of one who has sat down in an ant heap. They look
upon you as their plaything, as a thing which they have purchased
for their gratification for a single evening. They have the power
to condemn or to approve. And there they sit waiting to see whether
you will exert yourself with sufficient diligence to please them And
if they think that you have used sufficient diligence, they will
bray--bray like tethered asses, and you must listen to them and feel
content with their applause. For a time you will forget that you are
their property ... then, when you call it to mind, you will smite
yourself upon the snout for having found pleasure in their approval.
I hated this "public" to the verge of convulsions. Frequently I should
have liked to have spat on them from the stage, to have rowed them
with the vilest words. There were times when their eyes--you will feel
with me--pricked my body like darning-needles; and how greedily that
"public" waits for you to tickle it--waits with the confidence of that
lady land-owner whose serf-girls used to scratch the soles of her feet
every evening. You are sensible of this expectation of theirs, and
you think how pleasant it would be to have in your hand a knife long
enough to clean slice off all the noses of the first row of spectators
at a single stroke. Devil take the whole lot of them!
But pardon me this outburst! I fear that for the moment I was becoming
quite sentimental!--I only meant to say that I was a player, that I
hated my public, and wanted to run away from it. In this I was assisted
by the wife of a procurator. She did not please me and that did not
please her. She set her husband in motion, and I suddenly appeared in
the town of Saransk--just as if I were a grain of wheat whirled by the
wind from the banks of the Kama. Ah, well! everything in this wretched
life of ours is like a dream!
So I settled down in the town of Saransk, and there settled down along
with me the young wife of a young Permiak of the mercantile persuasion.
She was a determined character and dearly loved my art. So there we
were together. We had no money, neither had we any acquaintances.
Moreover, I was weary of her. She also, from sheer ennui, began to din
it into me that I did not love her. At first I endured it patiently,
but after a bit I could stand it no longer: "Be off," I cried! "leave
me! go to the devil!" That is exactly what I said to her. She caught up
a revolver and fired it at me. The bullet lodged in my left shoulder--a
little lower and I should have been in Paradise long ago. Anyhow, down
I fell. But she was frightened, and in her terror leaped into a well.
And there she soddened to death.
Me they conducted to the hospital. Well, there of course ladies
appeared upon the scene They revolved around me till I was able to
stand on my legs again, and when I could do that I got the billet of
secretary to the local police-station. Well, say what you will--to be
associated with the police is more convenient than to be under police
supervision. So there I lived for two or three months.
It was in those days, for the first time in my life, that I had an
attack of crushing, overwhelming ennui, that most horrible of all
sensations to which humanity is liable.... Everything around you ceases
to be of interest, and you desire something new. You cast about hither
and thither, you seek and seek, you find something, you seize it, and
immediately you discover it is not what you wanted. You feel yourself
led captive by something dark, you feel yourself fettered within, you
feel yourself incapable of living in the world with yourself, and yet
this world is more necessary to a man than everything else. A wretched
condition of things!
And it brought me at last to such a pass that I married. Such a step in
a man of my character is only possible in case of anguish or drunkard's
head-ache.
My wife was the daughter of a priest, who lived with her mother--her
father was dead--and had the free disposition of her property. She had
her own house, you might even say mansion, and she had money besides.
She was a handsome girl, no fool, and of a lively disposition, but
she was very fond of reading books, and this had a very bad effect
both upon me and her. She was constantly fishing for rules of life in
all sorts of little books, and whenever she got what she wanted, she
immediately proceeded to apply k personally to us both. Now, from my
tenderest years morality was a thing I never could endure.... At first
I laughed at my wife, but afterwards it became tiresome to listen to
her. I saw that she always made a great show of ideas extracted from
various little books, and bookish lore is about as suitable for a
woman as his master's cast-off costume is for a lackey. We began to
quarrel.... Then I made the acquaintance of a certain priest--there
was one of that sort there--a rogue who could play the guitar and
sing, dance the _trepak_[2] to admiration, and take his skinful like a
man. To my mind he was the best fellow in the town, because one could
always live a jolly life in his company, and she--that is my wife--was
always running him down, and always tried to drag me into the company
of the Scribes and Pharisees who surrounded her. For in the evenings
all the serious and best people in the town, as she called them, used
to assemble at her house; and serious enough they all were, as serious,
to my mind, as gallows-birds.... I also loved reading in those days,
but I never used to trouble myself about what I read, and I don't
understand why people should. But they--I mean my wife and those who
were with her--whenever they had read through a book, immediately
became as restless as if they had hundreds of prickles beneath their
skin. Now, I look upon it like this. Here's a book. Very well! An
interesting book. So much the better. But every book has been written
by a man, and a man cannot leap higher than his own head. All books are
written with one object: they want to prove that good is good and bad
is bad, and it's all one whether you have read a hundred of them or a
thousand. My wife discussed her little books by the dozen, so that I
began to tell her straight out that I should have had a better time of
it if I had married the parson instead of her. It was only the parson
who saved me from boredom, and but for him I should have bolted from my
wife there and then. As soon as the Pharisees called upon her--off I
went to the parson. In this way I lived through a year and a half. From
sheer boredom I helped the parson in the church services. At one time I
read the epistles, at another I stood in the choir and sang:
"From my youth up many passions have fought against me."
[2] A boisterous national dance of Russia.
I went through a good deal in those days, and I shall be justified for
many things at the Last Day for this endurance. But now my parson was
joined by a young kinswoman, and this woman came to him first because
he was a widower, and in the second place because his swine had eaten
him, _i.e.,_ had not eaten him entirely, but spoilt the look of him. He
had, you must know, fallen down drunk in the yard and gone to sleep,
and the swine had come into the courtyard and nibbled away at his ears,
cheeks, and neck. It is notorious that swine eat all sorts of garbage.
This diminution of his person threw my parson into a fever, and caused
him to summon his kinswoman that she might cherish him and I might
cherish her. Well, she and I set about the business very zealously,
and with great success. But my wife found out how the land lay--found
out I say, and at last it came to a quarrel. What was I to do? I gave
her as good as I got. Then she said to me: "Leave my house!" Well, I
thought the matter well over, and I quietly went away--right away from
the town. Thus the bonds of my marriage were unloosed. If my consort
is still alive she certainly regards me as happily dead to her. I have
never felt the slightest desire to see her again. I also think that it
is well for her to forget me. May she live in peace! Greatly did she
bore me in those days.
So now behold me a free man again, living in the town of Penza! I came
to loggerheads with the police; no place could be found for me here
or there--no place anywhere in fact. At last I became a psalmsinger
in the church. I took up the office and sang and read. In the church
I had again a "public" before me, and again a loathing of it arose
within me. I was a miserable labourer in a dependent position. It was
horrible to me. But a merchant's wife was my salvation. She was a
stout, God-fearing woman, and had a very dull time of it. And she goes
and gets enamoured of me by way of spiritual edification. So I got
into the habit of going to see her, and she fed me. Her husband lived
at home and was a little dotty, so she had to manage the whole plaguy
business. I went to her very courteously, and I said to her: "It is
hard for me to be paying visits here, Sekleteya Kirillovna, precious
hard," I said; "why don't you make me your assistant?" She made some
bones about it at first, and said I was much mistaken, but at last she
took me as her manager. And now I had a good time of it, but the town
itself was a filthy hole. There was no theatre, no decent hotel, no
interesting people. Of course I was bored to death, and in the midst of
my boredom I wrote a letter to my uncle. During my five years' absence
from Petersburg I had, of course, become very knowing. So I wrote now
requesting forgiveness for all that I had done, promised never to do
anything like it any more, and asked, among other things, whether it
was not possible for me to live at Petersburg. My uncle wrote it was
possible, but I must be careful. Then I broke with the merchant's wife.
You must know that she was stupid, fat, stodgy, and ugly. I had had
mistresses of great repute, elegant and sensible gossips every one
of them. Very well! Yet with all my other mistresses I had parted
scurvily; either I had driven them away with wrath and contumely, or
they had played me some nasty trick or other. But this Sekleteya had
inspired me with respect by reason of her very simplicity.
"Farewell," I said to her; "farewell, my dearly-beloved! God grant thee
prosperity!"
"And does it not pain thee to part with me?" said she.
"What!" I cried, "how can I help being pained at parting with one so
beautiful and wise?"
"I would never have parted from thee," said she, "but I suppose it must
be so, nevertheless I will always remember thee. Well, now, thou art a
free bird again, and canst fly away whithersoever thou desirest," and
she burst into tears.
"Forgive me, Sekleteya, I beg," said I.
"What!" she cried, "I owe thee thanks, not forgiveness."
"Thanks?" I asked, "how and for what?"
"I'll tell thee. Thou art this sort of man. Thou wouldst think nothing
of casting me adrift in the wide world, I put myself wholly into thy
hands, and thou mightest have robbed me as thou didst like, and I would
not have prevented thee--and all this thou knewest. But thou hast
repaid confidence with confidence, and I know how much of mine thou
hast consumed in these days--about four thousand in all. Another in thy
place," she said, "would have gobbled up the whole pot and emptied the
saucer on the hearth as well."
That's what she said. Well, she was a kind-hearted old thing, that I
will say.
I gave her a parting kiss, and with a light heart and five thousand
roubles in my pocket--no doubt she had taken these also into
consideration--I appeared at St. Petersburg. I lived like a baron, went
to the theatre, made acquaintances, sometimes from sheer ennui played
on the boards, but I played much more frequently at cards. Cards are
a capital occupation. You sit down at a table, and in the course of a
single night you die and rise again ten times over. It is exciting to
know that within the next few moments your last roubles may dribble
away, and you yourself may step down into the street a beggar, with
nothing but suicide or highway robbery before you. It is also good to
know that your neighbour or partner has, with reference to _his_ last
rouble, exactly the same ticklish and cruelly poignant sensation as
you yourself have had not so very long before him. To see red and pale
excited faces, tremulous with the terror of being beaten and with the
greed of gain, to look at them and win their cards away, one after the
other--ah! how strangely that excites the nerves and the blood!...
You win a card--and it is just as if you stole away from the man's
heart a bit of warm flesh with the nerves and blood.... That's being
happy if you like! This constant risk of falling is the finest thing in
life, and the finest thought in life was well expressed by the poet:
"Fierce contest is a rapturous bliss,
E'en on the marge of the abyss."
Yes, there is rapture in it, and, in general, it is only possible to
feel happy when you are risking something. The more risk--the larger
and fuller the life. Have you ever happened to starve? It has been my
luck not to eat anything for twice twenty-four hours at a stretch....
And look you, when the belly begins to prey upon itself, when you feel
your vitals drying up and dying with hunger--then, for the sake of a
bit of bread, you are ready to kill a man, a child; you are ready for
anything, and this capacity for crime has its own peculiar poetry, it
is a very precious sensation, and, having once experienced it, you have
a great respect for yourself.
However, let us continue our varied story. As it is, it is spinning
itself out as long as a funeral procession, in which I occupy the place
of the dear departed. Ugh! what foolish comparisons do crowd into my
head. Yet it is true, I suppose, though it is none the wiser, after
all, for being that. Apropos, Mr. Balzac has a very true and timely
expression--"It is as stupid as a fact." Stupid? Well, let it pass.
What do I care about the difference between stupid and wise? Well, as
I was saying, I lived at St. Petersburg. It was a good sort of town,
but it would be as good again if one half of its inhabitants were
drowned in that tiresome sea which is always flop-flopping around it.
I lived a merry, easy life at St Petersburg for two or three years,
under the protection of a lady who had taken a great fancy to me; but
then, in order to oblige a friend, I seriously offended the police,
and they asked me whither I would like to go out of St. Petersburg. I
suggested Tsarskoe-Selo. "No," they said, "you must go further." At
last we effected a compromise, and Tula was fixed upon. "Very well, let
it be Tula then," said they. "You may go even further," they said, "if
you like, but you must not appear here till three years have expired.
Your documents we will keep by us in the meantime as a memento of you,
and permit us to offer you in exchange a transit certificate to Tula.
Try within four-and-twenty hours to take your flight from hence." Well,
thought I, what am I to do now? One must obey one's superiors, how can
one help doing so?
Well, there I was. I sold all my property to my landlady for a mere
song, and posted off to my protectress. She had given orders that I was
not to be admitted, the minx! I then went on to two or three others of
my acquaintances--they met me as if I were a leper. I spat upon them
all, and repaired to a holy place I knew of, there to spend the last
hours of my life at Petersburg. At six o'clock in the morning I issued
from thence without a farthing in my pocket--I had played at cards and
was stony broke! So thoroughly had a high official cleared me out that
I was even lost in admiration at his talent, without feeling the least
humiliation at having been beaten. What was I to do next? I went, why
I know not, to the Moscow Station, entered and mingled with the crowd.
I saw the train to Moscow come in. I got into a carriage and sat down.
We passed two or three stations, and then they drove me out in triumph.
They wanted to report me, asked who I was; but when I showed them my
testimonial they left me in peace. "Go on further," said they, and I
went. Ten versts I traversed, I grew tired, and felt that I must have
something to eat. There was a sentry-box, belonging to a sentry of a
line regiment. I went up to him: "Give me a bit of bread, dear little
friend," I said. He looked at me. He gave me not only bread but a large
cup of milk. I passed the night with him, for the first time in my life
in vagabond fashion, in the open air, on straw, in the field behind
the sentry-box. I awoke next day, the sun was shining, the air like
champagne, green things all round, and the birds singing. I took some
more bread from the sentry and went on further.
You should understand that in a vagabond life there is something that
draws you on and on, something that quite swallows you up. It is
pleasant to feel yourself free from obligations, free from the various
little fetters tying down your existence when you live among men; free
from all those bagatelles obstructing your life to such an extent that
it ceases to be a satisfaction, and becomes a weary burden--a heavy
basket-like burden in the nature of an obligation to dress becomingly,
to speak becomingly, and do everything according to an accepted form
and not as you would have it On meeting an acquaintance, for instance,
you must use the accepted formula and say: How do you do?--instead of:
Be d----d! as you would sometimes like to say.
In general--if I may speak the truth freely--these
foolishly-ceremonious usages are such as to turn the mutual relations
of respectable citizens into a wearisome comedy. Nay, even into a
base comedy, for nobody ever calls anybody a fool or a villain to
his face--or if it be done sometimes it is only in an access of that
sincerity which we call anger.
Now the vagabond position is clean outside all these tinsel trappings.
The very circumstance that you renounce all the earlier conveniences of
life without regret, and can exist without them, gives you a pleasant
sense of elevation in your own eyes. You take up an unreservedly
indulgent attitude towards yourself--though for the matter of that
I for one have never been severe towards myself. T have never taken
myself to task, the teeth of my conscience have never gnawed me, nor
have I ever been scratched by the claws of my reason. You must know
that very early, and as if insensibly, I appropriated the most simple
and sensible of philosophies: however you may live you must die all
the same. Why then come to loggerheads with yourself--why drag yourself
by the tail to the left when your nature with all her might pricks you
on to the right? Pah! I cannot endure people who are always rending
themselves in twain. Why do they strive and strive? Supposing I were
to talk to some of these monstrosities, this is what I should ask
them: "Why do you go on like this? Why do you make such a fuss?" "I am
striving after self-perfection," he would say. "But what for?--what on
earth for?" "Because human perfection is the sense of life." "Well,
I don't understand that at all. Now if you talk about the perfection
of a tree, the sense of your words would be quite clear to me. Its
perfection is to be measured by its utility; you may use it for making
cart shafts or coffins, or anything else useful to man. Very well!
But your striving after perfection is entirely your own affair. But
tell me, why do you come to me and try to convert me to your faith?"
"Because," he would say, "you are a beast, and don't seek out the sense
of life." "But I have _found_ it if I am a brute, and the consciousness
of my brutality does not overwhelm me." "You lie," he would say; "if
you are conscious of it you ought to try to improve." "Improve? How?
Here I am, you see, living my own life in the world; my mind and my
feelings are at one with each other, and word and deed are in perfect
harmony." "That," he would say, "is vileness and cynicism." And so
the whole lot of them would argue of course. I feel that they are
liars and fools--I feel that, I say, and I cannot but despise them.
For indeed--I know what people are--if everything which is mean,
dirty, and evil to-day, were to be declared by you to-morrow upright,
pure, and good--all these snouts, without any effort of their own,
would to-morrow be upright, pure, and good. One thing only would be
necessary--the cowardice to annihilate self within themselves. That's
how it is.
That's putting it strong, you'll say. Bosh! It _is_ so. Let it be
strongly put, it's none the less right for all that Look now! I'll
put it like this: Serve God or the Devil, but don't serve God and the
Devil. A good rascal is always better than a shoddy honest man. There's
black and there's white, but mix them and you only get a dirty smudge.
In all my life I have only met with shoddy honest folks--the sort you
know whose honesty is piecemeal, as it were, just as if they had picked
it up beneath windows as beggars gather crumbs. This sort of honesty
is parti-coloured, badly stuck together, as if with pegs; it is the
bookish honesty, which is learnt by repetition, and serves men in much
the same way as their best trousers, which are trotted out on state
occasions. And, in general, the best part of good people is made up for
Sunday use; they keep it not in them but by them, for show, to take a
rise out of each other.... I _have_ met with people naturally good, but
they are rarely to be met with, and only among simple folks outside
the walls of towns. You feel at once that these really _are_ good. And
you see that they are born good. Yes.
But be that as it may. Deuce take the whole lot of them, good or bad.
What's Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba!
I am well aware that I am relating to you the facts of my life briefly
and superficially, and that it will be difficult for you to understand
the why and the wherefore, but that's my affair. It's not the facts but
the inclinations that are of importance. Facts are rot and rubbish.
I can make all sorts of facts if I like. For instance, I can take
this knife and stick it in your throat. That would be a fact of the
first order. Or if I were to stick myself with it that also would be
a fact, and in general you may make all sorts of facts according to
inclination. Inclinations--there you have the whole thing. Inclinations
produce facts, and they create ideas--and ideals. And you know what
ideals are--eh? Ideals are simply crutches, expressly invented for the
period when man has become a wretched brute, obliged to walk on his
hind paws only. On raising his head from the grey earth he sees above
him the blue sky, and is dazzled by the splendour of its brightness.
Then, in his stupidity, he says to himself: I will reach it. And
thenceforth he hobbles about the earth on these crutches, holding
himself upright on his hind paws with their assistance to this very
day.
Pray don't imagine that I also am climbing up to Heaven--I have never
experienced any such desire--I only say it because it sounds well.
But I have let my story get knotted and tangled again. However, it
doesn't matter. It is only in romances that the skein of events
revolves regularly; but our life is an irregular, clueless jumble. Why
do they pay money for romances while I grow old in vain? The Devil only
knows.
Well, let's get on.... This wandering life pleased me--pleased me all
the more because I soon discovered a means of subsistence. Once, as I
was on the trot, I perceived coming towards me--a Manor House stood
forth picturesquely in the distance--three highly genteel figures,
a man and two ladies. The man already had some grey in his beard,
and looked very genteel about the eyes; the faces of the ladies were
somewhat pinched, but they also were highly genteel. I put on the mug
of a martyr, drew up level with them, and begged for a night's lodging
at the Manor House. They looked at one another, and deliberated a long
time among themselves as if it were a matter of great importance. I
bowed politely, thanked them, and went on without making too much
haste. But they turned back and came after me. We entered into
conversation. Who was I, whence did I come, what was I about? They
were of a human temperament--liberal views, and their very questions
suggested such answers to me that by the time we had reached the
Manor House I had lied to them--the Devil only knows how much! I had
been a student, I had taught the people, my soul was held captive
to all manner of ideas, etc., etc. And all this simply because they
themselves would have it so. All I did was not to stand in the way of
their taking me for what they wanted to take me for. When I began to
reflect how hard the part would be that they wanted me to play, I was
not a little out of conceit with myself, I can tell you. But after
dinner I quite understood that it was for my own interest to play this
part, for they ate with a truly divine taste. They ate with feeling,
ate like civilised people. After the meal they conducted me to a little
apartment, the man provided me with trousers and other requisites--and,
speaking generally, they treated me humanely. Well, and I, in return,
loosed the reins of my imagination for their behoof.
Queen of Heaven, how I lied! Talk of Khlestakov![3] Khlestakov was an
idiot! I lied without ever losing the consciousness that I _was_ lying,
although it was my delight to lie my utmost. I lied to such an extent
that even the Black Sea would have turned red if it could have heard my
lying. These good people listened to me with delight--listened to me
and fed me, and looked after me as if I had been a sick child of their
own family. And I in return made up all sorts of things for them. Now
it was that I profited by all the good little books I had ever read,
and by the learned disputations of my wife's Scribes and Pharisees.
[3] The hero of Gogol's famous comedy, "Revizor."
Believe me, to lie with gumption is a high delight. If you lie and
see that folks believe you, you feel yourself on a higher level,
and to feel yourself above your fellows is a rare satisfaction. To
command their attention and think much of yourself in consequence is
foolishness; but to fool a man is always pleasant. And besides, it is
pleasant to the man himself to listen to lies--good lies--lies which
do not go against the grain. And it is possible that every lie, good
or the reverse, is a good lie. There is scarcely anything in the world
more worthy of attention than the various popular fables: notions,
dreams, and such like. Let us take love for instance. I have always
loved in women just that which they have never possessed, and with
which I myself have generally requited them. And this, too, is the best
thing in them. For instance, you come across a fresh little wench and
immediately you think to yourself: such a one must needs embrace you
this way, or kiss you that way. If in tears, she must look thus, and if
she laughs--thus. And then you persuade yourself that she has all these
qualities, and must certainly be exactly as you imagine her to be. And,
of course, when you make her acquaintance, and come to know her as she
really is--you find yourself sitting triumphantly in a puddle! But that
is of no importance. You cannot possibly make an enemy of fire simply
because it burns you sometimes, you must remember that it always warms
you. Isn't that so? Very well. For the same reason you must not call a
lie harmful; in every case put up with it and prefer it to truth....
Besides, it is quite uncertain what this thing called Truth is really
like. Nobody has ever seen her passport, and possibly if she were
called upon to produce her documents the deuce only knows how it would
turn out.
But here I am like Socrates, philosophising instead of attending to my
business.
Well, I lied to these good people till I had exhausted my imagination,
and as soon as I realised the danger of being a bore to them--I went
on further, after residing with them for three weeks. I departed well
provisioned for the journey, and I directed my footsteps towards the
nearest police-station in order that I might go from thence to Moscow.
But from Moscow to Tula I arrived in vain, in consequence of the
carelessness of my conductors.
Behold me, then, face to face with the Police-master at Tula. He looked
at me and inquired:
"What profession do you mean to follow here?"
"I don't know," I said.
"And why did they send you away from Petersburg?" he said.
"That also I don't know," said I.
"Obviously for some debauch not foreseen by the criminal code--eh?"
and he cross-examined me searchingly.
But I remained inscrutable.
"You are a very inconvenient sort of person," he observed.
"Everyone, I suppose, has his own speciality, my good sir," I rejoined.
He thought the matter over, and then he made me a proposition. "As
you have chosen your own place of residence, perhaps, if we do not
please you, you will go further on. There are many other towns for
choice--Orel, Kursk, Smolensk for example. After all it is all the same
to you where you live. Wouldn't it be agreeable to you if we passed
you on? It would be quite a relief to us not to have the bother of
looking after your health. We have such a mass of business here, and
you--pardon my candour--seem to be a man fully capable of increasing
the cares of the police; nay, you even seem to me expressly made for
the purpose. Well now," says he, "would you like me to give you a
_treshnetsa_[4] to assist you on your way?"
[4] A small Russian coin.
"You seem to appraise your duties somewhat cheaply," said I, "I think
it would be better if you let me remain here under the protection of
the laws of Tula."
But he obstinately refused to take me even as a gift. He was an odd
sort of chap! Well, I got fifteen roubles out of him, and went on
to the town of Smolensk. You see! The most awkward position contains
within it the possibility of something better. I affirm this on the
basis of solid experience and on the strength of my deep faith in the
dexterity of the human mind. Mind--that's the power! You are still
a young man, and what I say to you is this: believe in mind and you
shall never fall! Know that every man holds within him a fool and a
rogue; the fool is his senses, the rogue is his mind. His senses are
the fool because they are upright, just, and cannot dissemble, and how
is it possible to live without dissimulation? It is indispensable to
dissemble; it is necessary to do so even from compassion, and most of
all when they--your senses of course--pity others.
So I walked into Smolensk, feeling that the ground was firm beneath
me, and that on the one hand I could always count upon the support of
humane people, and on the other hand I was always sure of the support
of the Police. I was necessary to the first for the display of their
feelings, and to the second I was unnecessary--therefore they and
others were bound to pay me out of their superfluities.
That's how it was then!
So I went along and fell quite in love with myself. My prospects were
excellent. I fell in with a little muzhik. He looked up and asked:
"You will be one of the Enquiry-Agents, I suppose?"
"Enquiry-Agents," I thought, "what does he mean?"--but I answered:
"Yes, of course I am!"
"Did you come along the Trepovka Road?" he asked.
"Yes, along the Trepovka," I answered.
"And will you hire the folks soon?" he said.
"Very soon," said I.
"Listen, will they take deposits?"
"They will."
"Have you heard how much per head?"
"Yes, about two griveniki[5] per head."
"Laws!" said the little muzhik.
I put two and two together, guessed why he was ploughing there, and
asked him whence he came? how many souls[6] there were in his village?
how many could go out to work? how many went on foot? how many could go
on horseback?
[5] A grivenik = 10 kopecks = about 2¼d.
[6] Peasants.
He understood me.
"You are going to take labourers out of our village, eh?" said he.
"It is all the same to me where I take them from," said I.
I took from them a bank-note and promised to give to their village the
preference over other villages. I took two griveniki per head from the
labourers who had no horses, and thirty kopecks from the labourers who
had, on the pretext of giving them a written assurance of employment
for a period fixed by myself. They handed me over about a hundred
roubles[11] or so. And I wrote out little receipts for them, said a few
kind words to them, and so bade them adieu.
I appeared at Smolensk, and as it was already growing cold, I resolved
to pass the winter there. I quickly found some good people and stayed
with them The winter didn't pass half badly, but soon spring came and,
would you believe it, it drew me out of the town. I wanted to loaf
about--and who was there to prevent me? Off I went and strolled about
for a whole summer, and in the winter I plumped down into the city of
Elizavetgrad. There I plumped down, I say, and I could not wheedle
myself in anywhere. I hunted high and low, and at last I found my way.
I got the post of reporter of the local gazette--a petty affair, but it
found me my grub and left me a pretty free hand After that I made the
acquaintance of some Junkers--there is a school for the Junkers of the
cavalry regiment in the town--and established card-parties. We had some
capital card play, and in the course of the winter I managed to grab
a thousand roubles. And then spring again appeared. She found me with
money and the appearance of a gentleman.
Whither should I go? Well, I went to the town of Slavyansk by water.
There I played successfully till August, and then I was obliged to quit
the town. I passed the winter at Zhitornir with a butterfly--she was
wretched trash, but a woman of exquisite beauty.
In this manner I passed the years of my banishment from Petersburg and
then returned thither. The devil knows why, but the place has always
had an attraction for me. I arrived there a gentleman with means.
I sought out my acquaintances, and what do you think I discovered?
My adventures with the liberal people of the Moscow Government were
notorious. Everything was known--how I had lived three weeks with the
Ivanovs at the Manor House, feeding their hungry souls with the fruits
of my fancy; how I behaved to the Petrovs, and how I had impoverished
Madame Vanteva. Well, and what of it? Necessity knows no law, and if
seven doors are closed against you, ten more will open to you. But it
was no go. I tried very hard to make for myself a stable position in
society, and I could not do it. Was it because I had lost during these
three years something of my capacity of consorting with men, or was
it because people had grown more artful during that period? And now
when the shoe began to pinch the devil put it into my head to offer
my services to the Detective Force. I offered myself in the capacity
of an agent who keeps his eye upon the play-houses. They accepted
me. The terms were good. With this secret profession I combined a
public one--that of reporter to a small gazette. I provided them
with excellent newsletters, and occasionally composed the feuilletons
for them. And then, too, I played. In fact so carried away was I by
this card playing that I forgot to report it to the authorities. I
completely forgot, you know, that it was my duty to do so. But when
I lost I remembered: I must report this, I said to myself. But no,
I thought, first let me win back my losings, and then I will make
my report. In this way I put off the performance of my duty for a
very long time, till at last I was actually grabbed by the police on
the very scene of the offence behind a card-table. They abused me
publicly as one of their own agents. Next day I was brought up in the
usual way, a very savage indictment was laid against me; they told
me I had absolutely no conscience whatever; and banished me from the
capital--banished me a second time. And this time without the right of
re-entry for the space of ten years.
For six years I travelled about without complaining to God of my
fate--what did I care! I will relate nothing about this period, for
it was too monotonous--and manifold. Life in general is a gay bird.
Sometimes, indeed, it hasn't a grain to peck at; but it doesn't do to
be too exacting; even people sitting on thrones, remember, haven't
always things exactly their own way. In such a life as mine there are
no duties--that's the first great advantage--and there are no laws
except the law of nature--and that's the second. We disposers of our
lives may have our disquietudes--but then you'll find fleas even in
the best inns. On the other hand, you can go where you like, to the
right, to the left, forwards, backwards, everywhere your fancy draws
you; and if your fancy doesn't draw you, you can live on a peasant's
loaf--he is good, and will always give--you can live on the peasant's
loaf, I say, and lie down till the impulse seizes you to go on further.
Where have I been? I have been in the Tolstoi Colonies, and I have fed
in the kitchens of the Moscow merchants. I have lived in the great
monastery at Kiev and at New Athos. I have been at Czenstochowa, the
holiest shrine in Poland; at Muroma, the favourite place of pilgrimage
in Russia. Sometimes it seems to me as if I have traversed every little
footpath in the Russian Empire twice over. And as soon as ever I have
the opportunity of repairing my exterior I shall cross the frontier. I
shall make for Roumania, and there every road lies open before you. For
Russia now begins to bore me, and there is nothing to be done in her
that I have left undone.
And, indeed, during these six years, it seems to me that I have
accomplished a good deal. What a number of wondrous things I have
said, and what wonders I have related! You know the sort of thing. You
come to a village, you beg for a night's lodging, and when they have
fed you--you give free reins to your fancy. It is even possible that
I may have founded some new Sects, for I have spoken much, very much,
concerning the Scriptures. And the muzhik has a fine nose for the
Scriptures, and a couple of texts suffices him for the construction
of an entirely--new confession of faith which--but you know what I
mean. And how many laws have I not composed about the division and
repartition of land! Yes, I have infused a great deal of fancy into
life.
Well, that's how I live. I live and believe: wish for a dwelling-place
and it is yours. For I have common-sense and the women prize me. For
instance, I come to the town of Nikolaiev, and I go to the suburbs
where dwells the daughter of a soldier of Nikolaiev. The woman is a
widow, handsome, and well to do. I come in and say: "Well, Kapochka,
here I am; warm a bath for me! Wash me and clothe me, and I will abide
with thee even from moon to moon!" She immediately does everything
for me, and if she was entertaining a lover besides me, she drives
him away. And I live with her, a month or more, as long as I like.
For three years I lived with her, during the winter for two months,
last year I lived with her even three months; I might live with her
the whole winter through if she were not so silly and did not bore me.
Except her market garden, which brings her in two thousand roubles a
year, the woman certainly wants nothing.
And then I go to the Kuban, to the Labinskaya station. There lives the
cossack, Peter Cherny, and he accounts me a holy man--many consider
me a righteous man. Many simple believing folks say to me: "Little
father, take this money and place a candle for me before the Just One
when you are there...." I take it. I respect believing folks, and do
not want to offend them with the horrible truth. Not for the world
would I let them know that I expend their mite, not for a candle for
their patron, but in tobacco for my pipe.
There is also much charm in the consciousness of your aloofness from
people, in the clear comprehension of the height and stability of that
wall of offences committed against them which I myself have freely
erected. And there is much, both of sweet and bitter, in the constant
risk of being unmasked. Life is a game. I stake on my cards everything,
_i.e.,_ nothing, and I always win, without the risk of losing anything
else except my own ribs. But I am certain that if people, anywhere,
were to set about beating me, they would not be content with maiming me
but would kill me outright. It is impossible to feel offended at this,
and it would be foolish to fear it.
And so, young man, I have told you my story. I've even spun it out a
bit, as my story has its own philosophy, and you know that I take a
pleasure in telling it. It appears to me that I have told it pretty
well. I will go further, and say, very accurately. I have made up a
good deal of it, no doubt, but if I have lied I call Heaven to witness
that I have lied according to the facts. Look not upon them, but at
my talent for exposition--that, I assure you, is faithful to the
original--my own soul. I have set before you a dish hot from my fancy
served up with the sauce of the purest truth.
But why have I told you all this? I have told it you because, my dear
fellow, I feel that you believe in me--a little. It is kind of you. Be
it so!--but--believe no man! For whenever he tells you anything about
himself he is sure to be lying. If he be unfortunate he lies in order
to excite greater sympathy; if he be prosperous he lies in order to
make you envy him the more; and in every case, whether he be fortunate
or unfortunate, he lies in order to attract greater attention.