“To-day I will make my confession and purge myself of every sin,” I
thought to myself. “Nor will I ever commit another one.” At this point I
recalled all the peccadilloes which most troubled my conscience. “I will
go to church regularly every Sunday, as well as read the Gospel at the
close of every hour throughout the day. What is more, I will set aside,
out of the cheque which I shall receive each month after I have gone
to the University, two-and-a-half roubles” (a tenth of my monthly
allowance) “for people who are poor but not exactly beggars, yet without
letting any one know anything about it. Yes, I will begin to look out
for people like that--orphans or old women--at once, yet never tell a
soul what I am doing for them.
“Also, I will have a room here of my very own (St. Jerome’s, probably),
and look after it myself, and keep it perfectly clean. I will never let
any one do anything for me, for every one is just a human being like
myself. Likewise I will walk every day, not drive, to the University.
Even if some one gives me a drozhki [Russian phaeton.] I will sell
it, and devote the money to the poor. Everything I will do exactly and
always” (what that “always” meant I could not possibly have said, but at
least I had a vivid consciousness of its connoting some kind of
prudent, moral, and irreproachable life). “I will get up all my lectures
thoroughly, and go over all the subjects beforehand, so that at the
end of my first course I may come out top and write a thesis. During my
second course also I will get up everything beforehand, so that I may
soon be transferred to the third course, and at eighteen come out top in
the examinations, and receive two gold medals, and go on to be Master of
Arts, and Doctor, and the first scholar in Europe. Yes, in all Europe I
mean to be the first scholar.--Well, what next?” I asked myself at this
point. Suddenly it struck me that dreams of this sort were a form of
pride--a sin which I should have to confess to the priest that very
evening, so I returned to the original thread of my meditations.
“When getting up my lectures I will go to the Vorobievi Gori, [Sparrow
Hills--a public park near Moscow.] and choose some spot under a tree,
and read my lectures over there. Sometimes I will take with me something
to eat--cheese or a pie from Pedotti’s, or something of the kind. After
that I will sleep a little, and then read some good book or other, or
else draw pictures or play on some instrument (certainly I must learn to
play the flute). Perhaps SHE too will be walking on the Vorobievi Gori,
and will approach me one day and say, ‘Who are you?’ and I shall look at
her, oh, so sadly, and say that I am the son of a priest, and that I am
happy only when I am there alone, quite alone. Then she will give me her
hand, and say something to me, and sit down beside me. So every day we
shall go to the same spot, and be friends together, and I shall kiss
her. But no! That would not be right! On the contrary, from this day
forward I never mean to look at a woman again. Never, never again do I
mean to walk with a girl, nor even to go near one if I can help it. Yet,
of course, in three years’ time, when I have come of age, I shall
marry. Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can, and to do
gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned twenty-five, I shall
be stronger even than Rappo. On my first day’s training I mean to hold
out half a pood [The Pood = 40 Russian pounds.] at arm’s length for
five minutes, and the next day twenty-one pounds, and the third day
twenty-two pounds, and so on, until at last I can hold out four poods
in each hand, and be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one
should try to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER,
I shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an arshin
[The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and just hold him
there, so that he may feel my strength and cease from his conduct. Yet
that too would not be right. No, no, it would not matter; I should not
hurt him, merely show him that I--”
Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as foolish as
those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that, even if it be my fate
to live to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I,
an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible
and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some
lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a
Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance,
has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a
windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human
being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious, consolatory
power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save for the one general
feature of magic and impossibility, the dreams of each human being, of
each age of man, have their own distinguishing characteristics. At the
period upon which I look as having marked the close of my boyhood and
the beginning of my youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis
of my dreams. The first of those sentiments was love for HER--for an
imaginary woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I
somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine had a
little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha could look when
she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and a little of a certain
woman with pearls round her fair white neck whom I had once seen long,
long ago at a theatre, in a box below our own. My second sentiment was a
craving for love. I wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted
to be able to utter my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every
one thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for
something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment was
the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness that was
impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to verge upon
ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very, very soon some
unexpected chance would suddenly make me the richest and most famous
man in the world that I lived in constant, tremulous expectation of this
magic good fortune befalling me. I was always thinking to myself
that “IT is beginning,” and that I should go on thereafter to attain
everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for
ever hurrying from place to place, in the belief that “IT” must be
“beginning” just where I happened not to be. Lastly, my fourth and
principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled with
regret--yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation of
happiness to which I have referred that it had in it nothing of sorrow.
It seemed to me that it would be so easy and natural for me to tear
myself away from my past and to remake it--to forget all that had been,
and to begin my life, with all its relations, anew--that the past never
troubled me, never clung to me at all. I even found a certain pleasure
in detesting the past, and in seeing it in a darker light than the true
one. This note of regret and of a curious longing for perfection were
the chief mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my
growth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view of myself,
of men, and of God’s world. O good and consoling voice, which in later
days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded silently to the sway of
life’s falseness and depravity, so often raised a sudden, bold
protest against all iniquity, as well as mercilessly exposed the
past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to love only the pure vista of the
present, and promised me all that was fair and happy in the future! O
good and consoling voice! Surely the day will never come when you are
silent?