'Hm... what about? Why, about this: I'm certain you take me for a
fool.'
'Really,' I muttered, astounded.
'For an ignoramus, for a rustic of the steppes.... Confess....'
'I haven't the pleasure of knowing you,' I responded. 'What can make you
infer?...'
'Why, the sound of your voice is enough; you answer me so carelessly....
But I'm not at all what you suppose....'
'Allow me....'
'No, you allow me. In the first place, I speak French as well as you,
and German even better; secondly, I have spent three years abroad--in
Berlin alone I lived eight months. I've studied Hegel, honoured sir; I
know Goethe by heart: add to that, I was a long while in love with a
German professor's daughter, and was married at home to a consumptive
lady, who was bald, but a remarkable personality. So I'm a bird of your
feather; I'm not a barbarian of the steppes, as you imagine.... I too
have been bitten by reflection, and there's nothing obvious about me.'
I raised my head and looked with redoubled attention at the queer
fellow. By the dim light of the night-lamp I could hardly distinguish
his features.
'There, you're looking at me now,' he went on, setting his night-cap
straight, 'and probably you're asking yourself, "How is it I didn't
notice him to-day?" I'll tell you why you didn't notice me: because I
didn't raise my voice; because I get behind other people, hang about
doorways, and talk to no one; because, when the butler passes me with a
tray, he raises his elbow to the level of my shoulder.... And how is it
all that comes about? From two causes: first, I'm poor; and secondly,
I've grown humble.... Tell the truth, you didn't notice me, did you?'
'Certainly, I've not had the pleasure....'
'There, there,' he interrupted me, 'I knew that.'
He raised himself and folded his arms; the long shadow of his cap was
bent from the wall to the ceiling.
'And confess, now,' he added, with a sudden sideway glance at me; 'I
must strike you as a queer fellow, an original, as they say, or possibly
as something worse: perhaps you think I affect to be original!'
'I must repeat again that I don't know you....'
He looked down an instant.
'Why have I begun talking so unexpectedly to you, a man utterly a
stranger?--the Lord, the Lord only knows!' (He sighed.) 'Not through the
natural affinity of our souls! Both you and I are respectable people,
that's to say, egoists: neither of us has the least concern with the
other; isn't it so? But we are neither of us sleepy... so why not chat?
I'm in the mood, and that's rare with me. I'm shy, do you see? and not
shy because I'm a provincial, of no rank and poor, but because I'm a
fearfully vain person. But at times, under favourable circumstances,
occasions which I could not, however, particularise nor foresee, my
shyness vanishes completely, as at this moment, for instance. At this
moment you might set me face to face with the Grand Lama, and I'd ask
him for a pinch of snuff. But perhaps you want to go to sleep?'
'Quite the contrary,' I hastened to respond; 'it is a pleasure for me to
talk to you.'
'That is, I amuse you, you mean to say.... All the better.... And so, I
tell you, they call me here an original; that's what they call me when
my name is casually mentioned, among other gossip. No one is much
concerned about my fate.... They think it wounds me.... Oh, good Lord!
if they only knew... it's just what's my ruin, that there is absolutely
nothing original in me--nothing, except such freaks as, for instance, my
conversation at this moment with you; but such freaks are not worth a
brass farthing. That's the cheapest and lowest sort of originality.'
He turned facing me, and waved his hands.
'Honoured sir!' he cried, 'I am of the opinion that life on earth's only
worth living, as a rule, for original people; it's only they who have a
right to live. _Man verre n'est pas grand, maisje bois dans mon
verre,_ said someone. Do you see,' he added in an undertone, 'how
well I pronounce French? What is it to one if one's a capacious brain,
and understands everything, and knows a lot, and keeps pace with the
age, if one's nothing of one's own, of oneself! One more storehouse for
hackneyed commonplaces in the world; and what good does that do to
anyone? No, better be stupid even, but in one's own way! One should have
a flavour of one's own, one's individual flavour; that's the thing! And
don't suppose that I am very exacting as to that flavour.... God forbid!
There are no end of original people of the sort I mean: look where you
will--there's an original: every live man is an original; but I am not
to be reckoned among them!'
'And yet,' he went on, after a brief silence, 'in my youth what
expectations I aroused! What a high opinion I cherished of my own
individuality before I went abroad, and even, at first, after my return!
Well, abroad I kept my ears open, held aloof from everyone, as befits a
man like me, who is always seeing through things by himself, and at the
end has not understood the A B C!'
'An original, an original!' he hurried on, shaking his head
reproachfully....' They call me an original.... In reality, it turns out
that there's not a man in the world less original than your humble
servant. I must have been born even in imitation of someone else.... Oh,
dear! It seems I am living, too, in imitation of the various authors
studied by me; in the sweat of my brow I live: and I've studied, and
fallen in love, and married, in fact, as it were, not through my own
will--as it were, fulfilling some sort of duty, or sort of fate--who's
to make it out?'
He tore the nightcap off his head and flung it on the bed.
'Would you like me to tell you the story of my life?' he asked me in an
abrupt voice; 'or, rather, a few incidents of my life?'
'Please do me the favour.'
'Or, no, I'd better tell you how I got married. You see marriage is an
important thing, the touchstone that tests the whole man: in it, as in a
glass, is reflected.... But that sounds too hackneyed.... If you'll
allow me, I'll take a pinch of snuff.'
He pulled a snuff-box from under his pillow, opened it, and began again,
waving the open snuff-box about.
'Put yourself, honoured sir, in my place.... Judge for yourself, what,
now what, tell me as a favour: what benefit could I derive from the
encyclopaedia of Hegel? What is there in common, tell me, between that
encyclopaedia and Russian life? and how would you advise me to apply it
to our life, and not it, the encyclopaedia only, but German philosophy in
general.... I will say more--science itself?'
He gave a bound on the bed and muttered to himself, gnashing his teeth
angrily.
'Ah, that's it, that's it!... Then why did you go trailing off abroad?
Why didn't you stay at home and study the life surrounding you on the
spot? You might have found out its needs and its future, and have come
to a clear comprehension of your vocation, so to say.... But, upon my
word,' he went on, changing his tone again as though timidly justifying
himself, 'where is one to study what no sage has yet inscribed in any
book? I should have been glad indeed to take lessons of her--of Russian
life, I mean--but she's dumb, the poor dear. You must take her as she
is; but that's beyond my power: you must give me the inference; you must
present me with a conclusion. Here you have a conclusion too: listen to
our wise men of Moscow--they're a set of nightingales worth listening
to, aren't they? Yes, that's the pity of it, that they pipe away like
Kursk nightingales, instead of talking as the people talk.... Well, I
thought, and thought--"Science, to be sure," I thought, "is everywhere
the same, and truth is the same"--so I was up and off, in God's name, to
foreign parts, to the heathen.... What would you have? I was infatuated
with youth and conceit; I didn't want, you know, to get fat before my
time, though they say it's healthy. Though, indeed, if nature doesn't
put the flesh on your bones, you won't see much fat on your body!'
'But I fancy,' he added, after a moment's thought, 'I promised to tell
you how I got married--listen. First, I must tell you that my wife is no
longer living; secondly... secondly, I see I must give you some account
of my youth, or else you won't be able to make anything out of it....
But don't you want to go to sleep?'
'No, I'm not sleepy.'
'That's good news. Hark!... how vulgarly Mr. Kantagryuhin is snoring in
the next room! I was the son of parents of small property--I say
parents, because, according to tradition, I had once had a father as
well as a mother, I don't remember him: he was a narrow-minded man, I've
been told, with a big nose, freckles, and red hair; he used to take
snuff on one side of his nose only; his portrait used to hang in my
mother's bedroom, and very hideous he was in a red uniform with a black
collar up to his ears. They used to take me to be whipped before him,
and my mother used always on such occasions to point to him, saying, "He
would give it to you much more if he were here." You can imagine what an
encouraging effect that had on me. I had no brother nor sister--that's
to say, speaking accurately, I had once had a brother knocking about,
with the English disease in his neck, but he soon died.... And why ever,
one wonders, should the English disease make its way to the Shtchigri
district of the province of Kursk? But that's neither here nor there. My
mother undertook my education with all the vigorous zeal of a country
lady of the steppes: she undertook it from the solemn day of my birth
till the time when my sixteenth year had come.... You are following my
story?'
'Yes, please go on.'
'All right. Well, when I was sixteen, my mother promptly dismissed my
teacher of French, a German, Filipóvitch, from the Greek settlement of
Nyezhin. She conducted me to Moscow, put down my name for the
university, and gave up her soul to the Almighty, leaving me in the
hands of my uncle, the attorney Koltun-Babur, one of a sort well-known
not only in the Shtchigri district. My uncle, the attorney Koltun-Babur,
plundered me to the last half-penny, after the custom of guardians....
But again that's neither here nor there. I entered the university--I
must do so much justice to my mother--rather well grounded; but my lack
of originality was even then apparent. My childhood was in no way
distinguished from the childhood of other boys; I grew up just as
languidly and dully--much as if I were under a feather-bed--just as
early I began repeating poetry by heart and moping under the pretence of
a dreamy inclination... for what?--why, for the beautiful... and so
on. In the university I went on in the same way; I promptly got into a
"circle." Times were different then.... But you don't know, perhaps,
what sort of thing a student's "circle" is? I remember Schiller said
somewhere:
_Gefährlich ist's den Leu zu wecken
Und schrecklich ist des Tigers Zahn,
Doch das schrecklichste der Schrecken
Das ist der Mensch in seinem Wahn!_
He didn't mean that, I can assure you; he meant to say: _Das ist
ein_ circle _in der Stadt Moskau_!'
'But what do you find so awful in the circle?' I asked.
My neighbour snatched his cap and pulled it down on to his nose.
'What do I find so awful?' he shouted. 'Why, this: the circle is the
destruction of all independent development; the circle is a hideous
substitute for society, woman, life; the circle... oh, wait a bit, I'll
tell you what a circle is! A circle is a slothful, dull living side by
side in common, to which is attached a serious significance and a show
of rational activity; the circle replaces conversation by debate, trains
you in fruitless discussion, draws you away from solitary, useful
labour, develops in you the itch for authorship--deprives you, in fact,
of all freshness and virgin vigour of soul. The circle--why, it's
vulgarity and boredom under the name of brotherhood and friendship! a
concatenation of misunderstandings and cavillings under the pretence of
openness and sympathy: in the circle--thanks to the right of every
friend, at all hours and seasons, to poke his unwashed fingers into the
very inmost soul of his comrade--no one has a single spot in his soul
pure and undefiled; in the circle they fall down before the shallow,
vain, smart talker and the premature wise-acre, and worship the
rhymester with no poetic gift, but full of "subtle" ideas; in the circle
young lads of seventeen talk glibly and learnedly of women and of love,
while in the presence of women they are dumb or talk to them like a
book--and what do they talk about? The circle is the hot-bed of glib
fluency; in the circle they spy on one another like so many police
officials.... Oh, circle! thou'rt not a circle, but an enchanted ring,
which has been the ruin of many a decent fellow!'
'Come, you're exaggerating, allow me to observe,' I broke in.
My neighbour looked at me in silence.
'Perhaps, God knows, perhaps. But, you see, there's only one pleasure
left your humble servant, and that's exaggeration--well, that was the
way I spent four years in Moscow. I can't tell you, my dear sir, how
quickly, how fearfully quickly, that time passed; it's positively
painful and vexatious to remember. Some mornings one gets up, and it's
like sliding downhill on little sledges.... Before one can look round,
one's flown to the bottom; it's evening already, and already the sleepy
servant is pulling on one's coat; one dresses, and trails off to a
friend, and may be smokes a pipe, drinks weak tea in glasses, and
discusses German philosophy, love, the eternal sunshine of the spirit,
and other far-fetched topics. But even there I met original, independent
people: however some men stultify themselves and warp themselves out of
shape, still nature asserts itself; I alone, poor wretch, moulded myself
like soft wax, and my pitiful little nature never made the faintest
resistance! Meantime I had reached my twenty-first year. I came into
possession of my inheritance, or, more correctly speaking, that part of
my inheritance which my guardian had thought fit to leave me, gave a
freed house-serf Vassily Kudryashev a warranty to superintend all my
patrimony, and set off abroad to Berlin. I was abroad, as I have already
had the pleasure of telling you, three years. Well. There too, abroad
too, I remained the same unoriginal creature. In the first place, I need
not say that of Europe, of European life, I really learnt nothing. I
listened to German professors and read German books on their birthplace:
that was all the difference. I led as solitary a life as any monk; I got
on good terms with a retired lieutenant, weighed down, like myself, by a
thirst for knowledge but always dull of comprehension, and not gifted
with a flow of words; I made friends with slow-witted families from
Penza and other agricultural provinces, hung about _cafés_, read
the papers, in the evening went to the theatre. With the natives I
associated very little; I talked to them with constraint, and never had
one of them to see me at my own place, except two or three intrusive
fellows of Jewish extraction, who were constantly running in upon me and
borrowing money--thanks to _der Russe's_ gullibility. A strange
freak of chance brought me at last to the house of one of my professors.
It was like this: I came to him to enter my name for a course of
lectures, and he, all of a sudden, invited me to an evening party at his
house. This professor had two daughters, of twenty-seven, such stumpy
little things--God bless them!--with such majestic noses, frizzed curls
and pale-blue eyes, and red hands with white nails. One was called
Linchen and the other Minchen. I began to go to the professor's. I ought
to tell you that the professor was not exactly stupid, but seemed, as it
were, dazed: in his professorial desk he spoke fairly consecutively, but
at home he lisped, and always had his spectacles on his forehead--he was
a very learned man, though. Well, suddenly it seemed to me that I was in
love with Linchen, and for six whole months this impression remained. I
talked to her, it's true, very little--it was more that I looked at her;
but I used to read various touching passages aloud to her, to press her
hand on the sly, and to dream beside her in the evenings, gazing
persistently at the moon, or else simply up aloft. Besides, she made
such delicious coffee! One asks oneself--what more could one desire?
Only one thing troubled me: at the very moments of ineffable bliss, as
it's called, I always had a sort of sinking in the pit of the stomach,
and a cold shudder ran down my back. At last I could not stand such
happiness, and ran away. Two whole years after that I was abroad: I went
to Italy, stood before the Transfiguration in Rome, and before the Venus
in Florence, and suddenly fell into exaggerated raptures, as though an
attack of delirium had come upon me; in the evenings I wrote verses,
began a diary; in fact, there too I behaved just like everyone else. And
just mark how easy it is to be original! I take no interest, for
instance, in painting and sculpture.... But simply saying so aloud...
no, it was impossible! I must needs take a cicerone, and run to gaze at
the frescoes.'...
He looked down again, and again pulled off his nightcap.
'Well, I came back to my own country at last,' he went on in a weary
voice. 'I went to Moscow. In Moscow a marvellous transformation took
place in me. Abroad I was mostly silent, but now suddenly I began to
talk with unexpected smartness, and at the same time I began to conceive
all sorts of ideas of myself. There were kindly disposed persons to be
found, to whom I seemed all but a genius; ladies listened
sympathetically to my diatribes; but I was not able to keep on the
summit of my glory. One fine morning a slander sprang up about me (who
had originated it, I don't know; it must have been some old maid of the
male sex--there are any number of such old maids in Moscow); it sprang
up and began to throw off outshoots and tendrils like a strawberry
plant. I was abashed, tried to get out of it, to break through its
clinging toils--that was no good.... I went away. Well, in that too I
showed that I was an absurd person; I ought to have calmly waited for
the storm to blow over, just as one waits for the end of nettle-rash,
and the same kindly-disposed persons would have opened their arms to me
again, the same ladies would have smiled approvingly again at my
remarks.... But what's wrong is just that I'm not an original person.
Conscientious scruples, please to observe, had been stirred up in me; I
was somehow ashamed of talk, talk without ceasing, nothing but
talk--yesterday in Arbat, to-day in Truba, to-morrow in
Sivtsevy-Vrazhky, and all about the same thing.... But if that is what
people want of me? Look at the really successful men in that line: they
don't ask its use; on the contrary, it's all they need; some will keep
their tongues wagging twenty years together, and always in one
direction.... That's what comes of self-confidence and conceit! I had
that too, conceit--indeed, even now it's not altogether stifled.... But
what was wrong was that--I say again, I'm not an original person--I
stopped midway: nature ought to have given me far more conceit or none
at all. But at first I felt the change a very hard one; moreover, my
stay abroad too had utterly drained my resources, while I was not
disposed to marry a merchant's daughter, young, but flabby as a jelly,
so I retired to my country place. I fancy,' added my neighbour, with
another glance sideways at me, 'I may pass over in silence the first
impressions of country life, references to the beauty of nature, the
gentle charm of solitude, etc.'
'You can, indeed,' I put in.
'All the more,' he continued, 'as all that's nonsense; at least, as far
as I'm concerned. I was as bored in the country as a puppy locked up,
though I will own that on my journey home, when I passed through the
familiar birchwood in spring for the first time, my head was in a whirl
and my heart beat with a vague, sweet expectation. But these vague
expectations, as you're well aware, never come to pass; on the other
hand, very different things do come to pass, which you don't at all
expect, such as cattle disease, arrears, sales by auction, and so on,
and so on. I managed to make a shift from day to day with the aid of my
agent, Yakov, who replaced the former superintendent, and turned out in
the course of time to be as great, if not a greater robber, and over and
above that poisoned my existence by the smell of his tarred boots;
suddenly one day I remembered a family I knew in the neighbourhood,
consisting of the widow of a retired colonel and her two daughters,
ordered out my droshky, and set off to see them. That day must always be
a memorable one for me; six months later I was married to the retired
colonel's second daughter!...'
The speaker dropped his head, and lifted his hands to heaven.
'And now,' he went on warmly, 'I couldn't bear to give you an
unfavourable opinion of my late wife. Heaven forbid! She was the most
generous, sweetest creature, a loving nature capable of any sacrifice,
though I must between ourselves confess that if I had not had the
misfortune to lose her, I should probably not be in a position to be
talking to you to-day; since the beam is still there in my barn, to
which I repeatedly made up my mind to hang myself!'
'Some pears,' he began again, after a brief pause, 'need to lie in an
underground cellar for a time, to come, as they say, to their real
flavour; my wife, it seems, belonged to a similar order of nature's
works. It's only now that I do her complete justice. It's only now, for
instance, that memories of some evenings I spent with her before
marriage no longer awaken the slightest bitterness, but move me almost
to tears. They were not rich people; their house was very old-fashioned
and built of wood, but comfortable; it stood on a hill between an
overgrown courtyard and a garden run wild. At the bottom of the hill ran
a river, which could just be seen through the thick leaves. A wide
terrace led from the house to the garden; before the terrace flaunted a
long flower-bed, covered with roses; at each end of the flower-bed grew
two acacias, which had been trained to grow into the shape of a screw by
its late owner. A little farther, in the very midst of a thicket of
neglected and overgrown raspberries, stood an arbour, smartly painted
within, but so old and tumble-down outside that it was depressing to
look at it. A glass door led from the terrace into the drawing-room; in
the drawing-room this was what met the eye of the inquisitive spectator:
in the various corners stoves of Dutch tiles, a squeaky piano to the
right, piled with manuscript music, a sofa, covered with faded blue
material with a whitish pattern, a round table, two what-nots of china
and glass, knicknacks of the Catherine period; on the wall the
well-known picture of a flaxen-haired girl with a dove on her breast and
eyes turned upwards; on the table a vase of fresh roses. You see how
minutely I describe it. In that drawing-room, on that terrace, was
rehearsed all the tragi-comedy of my love. The colonel's wife herself
was an ill-natured old dame, whose voice was always hoarse with spite--a
petty, snappish creature. Of the daughters, one, Vera, did not differ in
any respect from the common run of young ladies of the provinces; the
other, Sofya, I fell in love with. The two sisters had another little
room too, their common bedroom, with two innocent little wooden
bedsteads, yellowish albums, mignonette, portraits of friends sketched
in pencil rather badly (among them was one gentleman with an
exceptionally vigorous expression of face and a still more vigorous
signature, who had in his youth raised disproportionate expectations,
but had come, like all of us, to nothing), with busts of Goethe and
Schiller, German books, dried wreaths, and other objects, kept as
souvenirs. But that room I rarely and reluctantly entered; I felt
stifled there somehow. And, too, strange to say, I liked Sofya best of
all when I was sitting with my back to her, or still more, perhaps, when
I was thinking or dreaming about her in the evening on the terrace. At
such times I used to gaze at the sunset, at the trees, at the tiny
leaves, already in darkness, but standing out sharply against the rosy
sky; in the drawing-room Sofya sat at the piano continually playing over
and over again some favourite, passionately pathetic phrase from
Beethoven; the ill-natured old lady snored peacefully, sitting on the
sofa; in the dining-room, which was flooded by a glow of lurid light,
Vera was bustling about getting tea; the samovar hissed merrily as
though it were pleased at something; the cracknels snapped with a
pleasant crispness, and the spoons tinkled against the cups; the canary,
which trilled mercilessly all day, was suddenly still, and only
chirruped from time to time, as though asking for something; from a
light transparent cloud there fell a few passing drops of rain.... And I
would sit and sit, listen, listen, and look, my heart would expand, and
again it seemed to me that I was in love. Well, under the influence of
such an evening, I one day asked the old lady for her daughter's hand,
and two months later I was married. It seemed to me that I loved her....
By now, indeed, it's time I should know, but, by God, even now I don't
know whether I loved Sofya. She was a sweet creature, clever, silent,
and warm-hearted, but God only knows from what cause, whether from
living too long in the country, or for some other reason, there was at
the bottom of her heart (if only there is a bottom to the heart) a
secret wound, or, to put it better, a little open sore which nothing
could heal, to which neither she nor I could give a name. Of the
existence of this sore, of course, I only guessed after marriage. The
struggles I had over it... nothing availed! When I was a child I had a
little bird, which had once been caught by the cat in its claws; it was
saved and tended, but the poor bird never got right; it moped, it pined,
it ceased to sing.... It ended by a cat getting into its open cage one
night and biting off its beak, after which it made up its mind at last
to die. I don't know what cat had caught my wife in its claws, but she
too moped and pined just like my unlucky bird. Sometimes she obviously
made an effort to shake herself, to rejoice in the open air, in the
sunshine and freedom; she would try, and shrink up into herself again.
And, you know she loved me; how many times has she assured me that she
had nothing left to wish for?--oof! damn my soul! and the light was
fading out of her eyes all the while. I wondered whether there hadn't
been something in her past. I made investigations: there was nothing
forthcoming. Well, you may form your own judgment; an original man would
have shrugged his shoulders and heaved a sigh or two, perhaps, and would
have proceeded to live his own life; but I, not being an original
creature, began to contemplate a beam and halter. My wife was so
thoroughly permeated by all the habits of an old maid--Beethoven,
evening walks, mignonette, corresponding with her friends, albums, et
cetera--that she never could accustom herself to any other mode of life,
especially to the life of the mistress of a house; and yet it seemed
absurd for a married woman to be pining in vague melancholy and singing
in the evening: "Waken her not at the dawn!"
'Well, we were blissful after that fashion for three years; in the
fourth, Sofya died in her first confinement, and, strange to say, I had
felt, as it were, beforehand that she would not be capable of giving me
a daughter or a son--of giving the earth a new inhabitant. I remember
how they buried her. It was in the spring. Our parish church was small
and old, the screen was blackened, the walls bare, the brick floor worn
into hollows in parts; there was a big, old-fashioned holy picture in
each half of the choir. They brought in the coffin, placed it in the
middle before the holy gates, covered it with a faded pall, set three
candlesticks about it. The service commenced. A decrepit deacon, with a
little shock of hair behind, belted low down with a green kerchief, was
mournfully mumbling before a reading-desk; a priest, also an old man,
with a kindly, purblind face, in a lilac cassock with yellow flowers on
it, served the mass for himself and the deacon. At all the open windows
the fresh young leaves were stirring and whispering, and the smell of
the grass rose from the churchyard outside; the red flame of the
wax-candles paled in the bright light of the spring day; the sparrows
were twittering all over the church, and every now and then there came
the ringing cry of a swallow flying in under the cupola. In the golden
motes of the sunbeams the brown heads of the few peasants kept rising
and dropping down again as they prayed earnestly for the dead; in a thin
bluish stream the smoke issued from the holes of the censer. I looked at
the dead face of my wife.... My God! even death--death itself--had not
set her free, had not healed her wound: the same sickly, timid, dumb
look, as though, even in her coffin, she were ill at ease.... My heart
was filled with bitterness. A sweet, sweet creature she was, and she did
well for herself to die!'
The speaker's cheeks flushed, and his eyes grew dim.
'When at last,' he began again, 'I emerged from the deep depression
which overwhelmed me after my wife's death, I resolved to devote myself,
as it is called, to work. I went into a government office in the capital
of the province; but in the great apartments of the government
institution my head ached, and my eyesight too began to fail: other
incidental causes came in.... I retired. I had thought of going on a
visit to Moscow, but, in the first place, I hadn't the money, and
secondly... I've told you already: I'm resigned. This resignation came
upon me both suddenly and not suddenly. In spirit I had long ago
resigned myself, but my brain was still unwilling to accept the yoke. I
ascribed my humble temper and ideas to the influence of country life and
happiness!... On the other side, I had long observed that all my
neighbours, young and old alike, who had been frightened at first by my
learning, my residence abroad, and my other advantages of education, had
not only had time to get completely used to me, but had even begun to
treat me half-rudely, half-contemptuously, did not listen to my
observations, and, in talking to me, no longer made use of superfluous
signs of respect. I forgot to tell you, too, that during the first year
after my marriage, I had tried to launch into literature, and even sent
a thing to a journal--a story, if I'm not mistaken; but in a little time
I received a polite letter from the editor, in which, among other
things, I was told that he could not deny I had intelligence, but he was
obliged to say I had no talent, and talent alone was what was needed in
literature. To add to this, it came to my knowledge that a young man, on
a visit from Moscow--a most good-natured youth too--had referred to me
at an evening party at the governor's as a shallow person, antiquated
and behind the times. But my half-wilful blindness still persisted: I
was unwilling to give myself a slap in the face, you know; at last, one
fine morning, my eyes were opened. This was how it happened. The
district captain of police came to see me, with the object of calling my
attention to a tumble-down bridge on my property, which I had absolutely
no money to repair. After consuming a glass of vodka and a snack of
dried fish, this condescending guardian of order reproached me in a
paternal way for my heedlessness, sympathising, however, with my
position, and only advising me to order my peasants to patch up the
bridge with some rubbish; he lighted a pipe, and began talking of the
coming elections. A candidate for the honourable post of marshal of the
province was at that time one Orbassanov, a noisy, shallow fellow, who
took bribes into the bargain. Besides, he was not distinguished either
for wealth or for family. I expressed my opinion with regard to him, and
rather casually too: I regarded Mr. Orbassanov, I must own, as beneath
my level. The police-captain looked at me, patted me amicably on the
shoulder, and said good-naturedly: "Come, come, Vassily Vassilyevitch,
it's not for you and me to criticise men like that--how are we qualified
to? Let the shoemaker stick to his last." "But, upon my word," I
retorted with annoyance, "whatever difference is there between me and
Mr. Orbassanov?" The police-captain took his pipe out of his mouth,
opened his eyes wide, and fairly roared. "Well, you're an amusing chap,"
he observed at last, while the tears ran down his cheeks: "what a joke
to make!... Ah! you are a funny fellow!" And till his departure he never
ceased jeering at me, now and then giving me a poke in the ribs with his
elbow, and addressing me by my Christian name. He went away at last.
This was enough: it was the last drop, and my cup was overflowing. I
paced several times up and down the room, stood still before the
looking-glass and gazed a long, long while at my embarrassed
countenance, and deliberately putting out my tongue, I shook my head
with a bitter smile. The scales fell from my eyes: I saw clearly, more
clearly than I saw my face in the glass, what a shallow, insignificant,
worthless, unoriginal person I was!'
He paused.
'In one of Voltaire's tragedies,' he went on wearily, 'there is some
worthy who rejoices that he has reached the furthest limit of
unhappiness. Though there is nothing tragic in my fate, I will admit I
have experienced something of that sort. I have known the bitter
transports of cold despair; I have felt how sweet it is, lying in bed,
to curse deliberately for a whole morning together the hour and day of
my birth. I could not resign myself all at once. And indeed, think of it
yourself: I was kept by impecuniosity in the country, which I hated; I
was not fitted for managing my land, nor for the public service, nor for
literature, nor anything; my neighbours I didn't care for, and books I
loathed; as for the mawkish and morbidly sentimental young ladies who
shake their curls and feverishly harp on the word "life," I had ceased
to have any attraction for them ever since I gave up ranting and
gushing; complete solitude I could not face.... I began--what do you
suppose?--I began hanging about, visiting my neighbours. As though drunk
with self-contempt, I purposely exposed myself to all sorts of petty
slights. I was missed over in serving at table; I was met with
supercilious coldness, and at last was not noticed at all; I was not
even allowed to take part in general conversation, and from my corner I
myself used purposely to back up some stupid talker who in those days at
Moscow would have ecstatically licked the dust off my feet, and kissed
the hem of my cloak.... I did not even allow myself to believe that I
was enjoying the bitter satisfaction of irony.... What sort of irony,
indeed, can a man enjoy in solitude? Well, so I have behaved for some
years on end, and so I behave now.'
'Really, this is beyond everything,' grumbled the sleepy voice of Mr.
Kantagryuhin from the next room: 'what fool is it that has taken a fancy
to talk all night?'
The speaker promptly ducked under the clothes and peeping out timidly,
held up his finger to me warningly,
'Sh--sh--!' he whispered; and, as it were, bowing apologetically in the
direction of Kantagryuhin's voice, he said respectfully: 'I obey, sir, I
obey; I beg your pardon.... It's permissible for him to sleep; he ought
to sleep,' he went on again in a whisper: 'he must recruit his
energies--well, if only to eat his dinner with the same relish
to-morrow. We have no right to disturb him. Besides, I think I've told
you all I wanted to; probably you're sleepy too. I wish you good-night.'
He turned away with feverish rapidity and buried his head in the pillow.
'Let me at least know,' I asked, 'with whom I have had the pleasure....'
He raised his head quickly.
'No, for mercy's sake!' he cut me short, 'don't inquire my name either
of me or of others. Let me remain to you an unknown being, crushed by
fate, Vassily Vassilyevitch. Besides, as an unoriginal person, I don't
deserve an individual name.... But if you really want to give me some
title, call me... call me the Hamlet of the Shtchigri district. There
are many such Hamlets in every district, but perhaps you haven't come
across others.... After which, good-bye.'
He buried himself again in his feather-bed, and the next morning, when
they came to wake me, he was no longer in the room. He had left before
daylight.