THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were going to an
inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they were overtaken by a
snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived,
not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was
dark. They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut. It so happened
that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying--the corpse of the
Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days
before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the
great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life
so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the
table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that
it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.
In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow
off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old
village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp.
There was a strong smell of paraffin.
“Who are you?” asked the doctor.
“Conshtable,...” answered the constable.
He used to spell it “conshtable” when he signed the receipts at the post
office.
“And where are the witnesses?”
“They must have gone to tea, your honor.”
On the right was the parlor, the travelers’ or gentry’s room; on the
left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under the
rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by the
constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into the parlor.
Here a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor
close to the table-legs. In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly
see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything
about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and
the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a
samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.
“To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!” said the doctor.
“If one does want to put a bullet through one’s brains, one ought to do
it at home in some outhouse.”
He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat, and his
felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining magistrate, sat down
opposite.
“These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists,” the doctor
went on hotly. “If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he
rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he gets up a scene
with his wife without troubling about your presence; and when he feels
inclined to shoot himself, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo
hut, so as to give the maximum of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen
in every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves! That’s why
the elderly so dislike our ‘nervous age.’”
“The elderly dislike so many things,” said the examining magistrate,
yawning. “You should point out to the elder generation what the
difference is between the suicides of the past and the suicides of
to-day. In the old days the so-called gentleman shot himself because he
had made away with Government money, but nowadays it is because he is
sick of life, depressed.... Which is better?”
“Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have shot
himself somewhere else.”
“Such trouble!” said the constable, “such trouble! It’s a real
affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they haven’t
slept these three nights. The children are crying. The cows ought to be
milked, but the women won’t go to the stall--they are afraid... for
fear the gentleman should appear to them in the darkness. Of course they
are silly women, but some of the men are frightened too. As soon as
it is dark they won’t go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock
together. And the witnesses too....”
Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark beard, and
the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still young, who had only
taken his degree two years before and looked more like a student than an
official, sat in silence, musing. They were vexed that they were late.
Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night,
though it was not yet six o’clock; and they had before them a long
evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold
in the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney
and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life
which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once
dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who
were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without
noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting
in their studies over a book. Oh, how much they would have given now
only to stroll along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow,
to listen to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!
“Oo-oo-oo-oo!” sang the storm in the loft, and something outside slammed
viciously, probably the signboard on the hut. “Oo-oo-oo-oo!”
“You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here,” said
Startchenko, getting up. “It’s not six yet, it’s too early to go to bed;
I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only a couple of
miles from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend the evening there.
Constable, run and tell my coachman not to take the horses out. And what
are you going to do?” he asked Lyzhin.
“I don’t know; I expect I shall go to sleep.”
The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out. Lyzhin could
hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to quiver on
the frozen horses. He drove off.
“It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here,” said the
constable; “come into the other room. It’s dirty, but for one night it
won’t matter. I’ll get a samovar from a peasant and heat it directly.
I’ll heap up some hay for you, and then you go to sleep, and God bless
you, your honor.”
A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the kitchen
drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was standing at the door
talking. He was an old man about sixty, short and very thin, bent and
white, with a naive smile on his face and watery eyes, and he kept
smacking with his lips as though he were sucking a sweetmeat. He was
wearing a short sheepskin coat and high felt boots, and held his stick
in his hands all the time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused
his compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him familiarly.
“The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the police
superintendent or the examining magistrate came,” he said, “so I suppose
I must go now.... It’s nearly three miles to the _volost_, and the
storm, the snowdrifts, are something terrible--maybe one won’t get there
before midnight. Ough! how the wind roars!”
“I don’t need the elder,” said Lyzhin. “There is nothing for him to do
here.”
He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked:
“Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been constable?”
“How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I began going
as constable, that’s how I reckon it. And from that time I have been
going every day since. Other people have holidays, but I am always
going. When it’s Easter and the church bells are ringing and Christ has
risen, I still go about with my bag--to the treasury, to the post, to
the police superintendent’s lodgings, to the rural captain, to the tax
inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the peasants, to
all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices, tax papers, letters,
forms of different sorts, circulars, and to be sure, kind gentleman,
there are all sorts of forms nowadays, so as to note down the
numbers--yellow, white, and red--and every gentleman or priest or
well-to-do peasant must write down a dozen times in the year how much
he has sown and harvested, how many quarters or poods he has of rye, how
many of oats, how many of hay, and what the weather’s like, you know,
and insects, too, of all sorts. To be sure you can write what you like,
it’s only a regulation, but one must go and give out the notices and
then go again and collect them. Here, for instance, there’s no need to
cut open the gentleman; you know yourself it’s a silly thing, it’s only
dirtying your hands, and here you have been put to trouble, your honor;
you have come because it’s the regulation; you can’t help it. For thirty
years I have been going round according to regulation. In the summer
it is all right, it is warm and dry; but in winter and autumn it’s
uncomfortable. At times I have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all
sorts of things have happened--wicked people set on me in the forest and
took away my bag; I have been beaten, and I have been before a court of
law.”
“What were you accused of?”
“Of fraud.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, you see, Hrisanf Grigoryev, the clerk, sold the contractor some
boards belonging to someone else--cheated him, in fact. I was mixed up
in it. They sent me to the tavern for vodka; well, the clerk did not
share with me--did not even offer me a glass; but as through my poverty
I was--in appearance, I mean--not a man to be relied upon, not a man of
any worth, we were both brought to trial; he was sent to prison, but,
praise God! I was acquitted on all points. They read a notice, you know,
in the court. And they were all in uniforms--in the court, I mean. I
can tell you, your honor, my duties for anyone not used to them are
terrible, absolutely killing; but to me it is nothing. In fact, my feet
ache when I am not walking. And at home it is worse for me. At home one
has to heat the stove for the clerk in the _volost_ office, to fetch
water for him, to clean his boots.”
“And what wages do you get?” Lyzhin asked.
“Eighty-four roubles a year.”
“I’ll bet you get other little sums coming in. You do, don’t you?”
“Other little sums? No, indeed! Gentlemen nowadays don’t often give
tips. Gentlemen nowadays are strict, they take offense at anything.
If you bring them a notice they are offended, if you take off your cap
before them they are offended. ‘You have come to the wrong entrance,’
they say. ‘You are a drunkard,’ they say. ‘You smell of onion; you are a
blockhead; you are the son of a bitch.’ There are kind-hearted ones, of
course; but what does one get from them? They only laugh and call one
all sorts of names. Mr. Altuhin, for instance, he is a good-natured
gentleman; and if you look at him he seems sober and in his right mind,
but so soon as he sees me he shouts and does not know what he means
himself. He gave me such a name ‘You,’ said he,...” The constable
uttered some word, but in such a low voice that it was impossible to
make out what he said.
“What?” Lyzhin asked. “Say it again.”
“‘Administration,’” the constable repeated aloud. “He has been
calling me that for a long while, for the last six years. ‘Hullo,
Administration!’ But I don’t mind; let him, God bless him! Sometimes a
lady will send one a glass of vodka and a bit of pie and one drinks to
her health. But peasants give more; peasants are more kind-hearted,
they have the fear of God in their hearts: one will give a bit of bread,
another a drop of cabbage soup, another will stand one a glass. The
village elders treat one to tea in the tavern. Here the witnesses have
gone to their tea. ‘Loshadin,’ they said, ‘you stay here and keep watch
for us,’ and they gave me a kopeck each. You see, they are frightened,
not being used to it, and yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and
offered me a glass.”
“And you, aren’t you frightened?”
“I am, sir; but of course it is my duty, there is no getting away from
it. In the summer I was taking a convict to the town, and he set upon
me and gave me such a drubbing! And all around were fields, forest--how
could I get away from him? It’s just the same here. I remember the
gentleman, Mr. Lesnitsky, when he was so high, and I knew his father and
mother. I am from the village of Nedoshtchotova, and they, the Lesnitsky
family, were not more than three-quarters of a mile from us and less
than that, their ground next to ours, and Mr. Lesnitsky had a sister, a
God-fearing and tender-hearted lady. Lord keep the soul of Thy servant
Yulya, eternal memory to her! She was never married, and when she was
dying she divided all her property; she left three hundred acres to the
monastery, and six hundred to the commune of peasants of Nedoshtchotova
to commemorate her soul; but her brother hid the will, they do say burnt
it in the stove, and took all this land for himself. He thought, to be
sure, it was for his benefit; but--nay, wait a bit, you won’t get on
in the world through injustice, brother. The gentleman did not go to
confession for twenty years after. He kept away from the church, to be
sure, and died impenitent. He burst. He was a very fat man, so he
burst lengthways. Then everything was taken from the young master, from
Seryozha, to pay the debts--everything there was. Well, he had not gone
very far in his studies, he couldn’t do anything, and the president of
the Rural Board, his uncle--‘I’ll take him’--Seryozha, I mean--thinks
he, ‘for an agent; let him collect the insurance, that’s not a difficult
job,’ and the gentleman was young and proud, he wanted to be living on
a bigger scale and in better style and with more freedom. To be sure it
was a come-down for him to be jolting about the district in a wretched
cart and talking to the peasants; he would walk and keep looking on the
ground, looking on the ground and saying nothing; if you called his name
right in his ear, ‘Sergey Sergeyitch!’ he would look round like this,
‘Eh?’ and look down on the ground again, and now you see he has laid
hands on himself. There’s no sense in it, your honor, it’s not right,
and there’s no making out what’s the meaning of it, merciful Lord! Say
your father was rich and you are poor; it is mortifying, there’s no
doubt about it, but there, you must make up your mind to it. I used to
live in good style, too; I had two horses, your honor, three cows, I
used to keep twenty head of sheep; but the time has come, and I am
left with nothing but a wretched bag, and even that is not mine but
Government property. And now in our Nedoshtchotova, if the truth is to
be told, my house is the worst of the lot. Makey had four footmen, and
now Makey is a footman himself. Petrak had four laborers, and now Petrak
is a laborer himself.”
“How was it you became poor?” asked the examining magistrate.
“My sons drink terribly. I could not tell you how they drink, you
wouldn’t believe it.”
Lyzhin listened and thought how he, Lyzhin, would go back sooner or
later to Moscow, while this old man would stay here for ever, and would
always be walking and walking. And how many times in his life he would
come across such battered, unkempt old men, not “men of any worth,” in
whose souls fifteen kopecks, glasses of vodka, and a profound belief
that you can’t get on in this life by dishonesty, were equally firmly
rooted.
Then he grew tired of listening, and told the old man to bring him some
hay for his bed, There was an iron bedstead with a pillow and a quilt in
the traveler’s room, and it could be fetched in; but the dead man had
been lying by it for nearly three days (and perhaps sitting on it just
before his death), and it would be disagreeable to sleep upon it
now....
“It’s only half-past seven,” thought Lyzhin, glancing at his watch. “How
awful it is!”
He was not sleepy, but having nothing to do to pass away the time,
he lay down and covered himself with a rug. Loshadin went in and out
several times, clearing away the tea-things; smacking his lips and
sighing, he kept tramping round the table; at last he took his little
lamp and went out, and, looking at his long, gray-headed, bent figure
from behind, Lyzhin thought:
“Just like a magician in an opera.”
It was dark. The moon must have been behind the clouds, as the windows
and the snow on the window-frames could be seen distinctly.
“Oo-oo-oo!” sang the storm, “Oo-oo-oo-oo!”
“Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!” wailed a woman in the loft, or it sounded like it.
“Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!”
“B-booh!” something outside banged against the wall. “Trah!”
The examining magistrate listened: there was no woman up there, it was
the wind howling. It was rather cold, and he put his fur coat over his
rug. As he got warm he thought how remote all this--the storm, and the
hut, and the old man, and the dead body lying in the next room--how
remote it all was from the life he desired for himself, and how alien
it all was to him, how petty, how uninteresting. If this man had killed
himself in Moscow or somewhere in the neighborhood, and he had had to
hold an inquest on him there, it would have been interesting, important,
and perhaps he might even have been afraid to sleep in the next room to
the corpse. Here, nearly a thousand miles from Moscow, all this was
seen somehow in a different light; it was not life, they were not human
beings, but something only existing “according to the regulation,” as
Loshadin said; it would leave not the faintest trace in the memory, and
would be forgotten as soon as he, Lyzhin, drove away from Syrnya. The
fatherland, the real Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg; but here he was in
the provinces, the colonies. When one dreamed of playing a leading
part, of becoming a popular figure, of being, for instance, examining
magistrate in particularly important cases or prosecutor in a circuit
court, of being a society lion, one always thought of Moscow. To live,
one must be in Moscow; here one cared for nothing, one grew easily
resigned to one’s insignificant position, and only expected one thing of
life--to get away quickly, quickly. And Lyzhin mentally moved about
the Moscow streets, went into the familiar houses, met his kindred, his
comrades, and there was a sweet pang at his heart at the thought that
he was only twenty-six, and that if in five or ten years he could break
away from here and get to Moscow, even then it would not be too late
and he would still have a whole life before him. And as he sank into
unconsciousness, as his thoughts began to be confused, he imagined the
long corridor of the court at Moscow, himself delivering a speech, his
sisters, the orchestra which for some reason kept droning: “Oo-oo-oo-oo!
Oo-oooo-oo!”
“Booh! Trah!” sounded again. “Booh!”
And he suddenly recalled how one day, when he was talking to the
bookkeeper in the little office of the Rural Board, a thin, pale
gentleman with black hair and dark eyes walked in; he had a disagreeable
look in his eyes such as one sees in people who have slept too long
after dinner, and it spoilt his delicate, intelligent profile; and
the high boots he was wearing did not suit him, but looked clumsy. The
bookkeeper had introduced him: “This is our insurance agent.”
“So that was Lesnitsky,... this same man,” Lyzhin reflected now.
He recalled Lesnitsky’s soft voice, imagined his gait, and it seemed
to him that someone was walking beside him now with a step like
Lesnitsky’s.
All at once he felt frightened, his head turned cold.
“Who’s there?” he asked in alarm.
“The conshtable!”
“What do you want here?”
“I have come to ask, your honor--you said this evening that you did not
want the elder, but I am afraid he may be angry. He told me to go to
him. Shouldn’t I go?”
“That’s enough, you bother me,” said Lyzhin with vexation, and he
covered himself up again.
“He may be angry.... I’ll go, your honor. I hope you will be
comfortable,” and Loshadin went out.
In the passage there was coughing and subdued voices. The witnesses must
have returned.
“We’ll let those poor beggars get away early to-morrow,...” thought
the examining magistrate; “we’ll begin the inquest as soon as it is
daylight.”
He began sinking into forgetfulness when suddenly there were steps
again, not timid this time but rapid and noisy. There was the slam of a
door, voices, the scratching of a match....
“Are you asleep? Are you asleep?” Dr. Startchenko was asking him
hurriedly and angrily as he struck one match after another; he was
covered with snow, and brought a chill air in with him. “Are you asleep?
Get up! Let us go to Von Taunitz’s. He has sent his own horses for you.
Come along. There, at any rate, you will have supper, and sleep like
a human being. You see I have come for you myself. The horses are
splendid, we shall get there in twenty minutes.”
“And what time is it now?”
“A quarter past ten.”
Lyzhin, sleepy and discontented, put on his felt overboots, his fur-lined
coat, his cap and hood, and went out with the doctor. There was not
a very sharp frost, but a violent and piercing wind was blowing and
driving along the street the clouds of snow which seemed to be racing
away in terror: high drifts were heaped up already under the fences and
at the doorways. The doctor and the examining magistrate got into the
sledge, and the white coachman bent over them to button up the cover.
They were both hot.
“Ready!”
They drove through the village. “Cutting a feathery furrow,” thought
the examining magistrate, listlessly watching the action of the trace
horse’s legs. There were lights in all the huts, as though it were the
eve of a great holiday: the peasants had not gone to bed because they
were afraid of the dead body. The coachman preserved a sullen silence,
probably he had felt dreary while he was waiting by the Zemstvo hut, and
now he, too, was thinking of the dead man.
“At the Von Taunitz’s,” said Startchenko, “they all set upon me when
they heard that you were left to spend the night in the hut, and asked
me why I did not bring you with me.”
As they drove out of the village, at the turning the coachman suddenly
shouted at the top of his voice: “Out of the way!”
They caught a glimpse of a man: he was standing up to his knees in
the snow, moving off the road and staring at the horses. The examining
magistrate saw a stick with a crook, and a beard and a bag, and he
fancied that it was Loshadin, and even fancied that he was smiling. He
flashed by and disappeared.
The road ran at first along the edge of the forest, then along a broad
forest clearing; they caught glimpses of old pines and a young birch
copse, and tall, gnarled young oak trees standing singly in the
clearings where the wood had lately been cut; but soon it was all merged
in the clouds of snow. The coachman said he could see the forest; the
examining magistrate could see nothing but the trace horse. The wind
blew on their backs.
All at once the horses stopped.
“Well, what is it now?” asked Startchenko crossly.
The coachman got down from the box without a word and began running
round the sledge, treading on his heels; he made larger and larger
circles, getting further and further away from the sledge, and it looked
as though he were dancing; at last he came back and began to turn off to
the right.
“You’ve got off the road, eh?” asked Startchenko.
“It’s all ri-ight....”
Then there was a little village and not a single light in it. Again the
forest and the fields. Again they lost the road, and again the coachman
got down from the box and danced round the sledge. The sledge flew
along a dark avenue, flew swiftly on. And the heated trace horse’s hoofs
knocked against the sledge. Here there was a fearful roaring sound from
the trees, and nothing could be seen, as though they were flying on into
space; and all at once the glaring light at the entrance and the windows
flashed upon their eyes, and they heard the good-natured, drawn-out
barking of dogs. They had arrived.
While they were taking off their fur coats and their felt boots below,
“Un Petit Verre de Clicquot” was being played upon the piano overhead,
and they could hear the children beating time with their feet.
Immediately on going in they were aware of the snug warmth and special
smell of the old apartments of a mansion where, whatever the weather
outside, life is so warm and clean and comfortable.
“That’s capital!” said Von Taunitz, a fat man with an incredibly thick
neck and with whiskers, as he shook the examining magistrate’s
hand. “That’s capital! You are very welcome, delighted to make your
acquaintance. We are colleagues to some extent, you know. At one time I
was deputy prosecutor; but not for long, only two years. I came here to
look after the estate, and here I have grown old--an old fogey, in fact.
You are very welcome,” he went on, evidently restraining his voice so as
not to speak too loud; he was going upstairs with his guests. “I have no
wife, she’s dead. But here, I will introduce my daughters,” and turning
round, he shouted down the stairs in a voice of thunder: “Tell Ignat to
have the sledge ready at eight o’clock to-morrow morning.”
His four daughters, young and pretty girls, all wearing gray dresses and
with their hair done up in the same style, and their cousin, also young
and attractive, with her children, were in the drawing-room. Startchenko,
who knew them already, began at once begging them to sing something, and
two of the young ladies spent a long time declaring they could not sing
and that they had no music; then the cousin sat down to the piano, and
with trembling voices, they sang a duet from “The Queen of Spades.”
Again “Un Petit Verre de Clicquot” was played, and the children skipped
about, beating time with their feet. And Startchenko pranced about too.
Everybody laughed.
Then the children said good-night and went off to bed. The examining
magistrate laughed, danced a quadrille, flirted, and kept wondering
whether it was not all a dream? The kitchen of the Zemstvo hut, the
heap of hay in the corner, the rustle of the beetles, the revolting
poverty-stricken surroundings, the voices of the witnesses, the wind,
the snow storm, the danger of being lost; and then all at once this
splendid, brightly lighted room, the sounds of the piano, the lovely
girls, the curly-headed children, the gay, happy laughter--such a
transformation seemed to him like a fairy tale, and it seemed incredible
that such transitions were possible at the distance of some two miles in
the course of one hour. And dreary thoughts prevented him from enjoying
himself, and he kept thinking this was not life here, but bits of life
fragments, that everything here was accidental, that one could draw no
conclusions from it; and he even felt sorry for these girls, who were
living and would end their lives in the wilds, in a province far away
from the center of culture, where nothing is accidental, but everything
is in accordance with reason and law, and where, for instance, every
suicide is intelligible, so that one can explain why it has happened and
what is its significance in the general scheme of things. He imagined
that if the life surrounding him here in the wilds were not intelligible
to him, and if he did not see it, it meant that it did not exist at all.
At supper the conversation turned on Lesnitsky.
“He left a wife and child,” said Startchenko. “I would forbid
neurasthenics and all people whose nervous system is out of order to
marry, I would deprive them of the right and possibility of multiplying
their kind. To bring into the world nervous, invalid children is a
crime.”
“He was an unfortunate young man,” said Von Taunitz, sighing gently and
shaking his head. “What a lot one must suffer and think about before
one brings oneself to take one’s own life,... a young life! Such a
misfortune may happen in any family, and that is awful. It is hard to
bear such a thing, insufferable....”
And all the girls listened in silence with grave faces, looking at their
father. Lyzhin felt that he, too, must say something, but he couldn’t
think of anything, and merely said:
“Yes, suicide is an undesirable phenomenon.”
He slept in a warm room, in a soft bed covered with a quilt under
which there were fine clean sheets, but for some reason did not feel
comfortable: perhaps because the doctor and Von Taunitz were, for a long
time, talking in the adjoining room, and overhead he heard, through the
ceiling and in the stove, the wind roaring just as in the Zemstvo hut,
and as plaintively howling: “Oo-oo-oo-oo!”
Von Taunitz’s wife had died two years before, and he was still unable
to resign himself to his loss and, whatever he was talking about, always
mentioned his wife; and there was no trace of a prosecutor left about
him now.
“Is it possible that I may some day come to such a condition?” thought
Lyzhin, as he fell asleep, still hearing through the wall his host’s
subdued, as it were bereaved, voice.
The examining magistrate did not sleep soundly. He felt hot and
uncomfortable, and it seemed to him in his sleep that he was not at
Von Taunitz’s, and not in a soft clean bed, but still in the hay at the
Zemstvo hut, hearing the subdued voices of the witnesses; he fancied
that Lesnitsky was close by, not fifteen paces away. In his dreams he
remembered how the insurance agent, black-haired and pale, wearing
dusty high boots, had come into the bookkeeper’s office. “This is our
insurance agent....”
Then he dreamed that Lesnitsky and Loshadin the constable were walking
through the open country in the snow, side by side, supporting each
other; the snow was whirling about their heads, the wind was blowing on
their backs, but they walked on, singing: “We go on, and on, and
on....”
The old man was like a magician in an opera, and both of them were
singing as though they were on the stage:
“We go on, and on, and on!... You are in the warmth, in the light
and snugness, but we are walking in the frost and the storm, through the
deep snow.... We know nothing of ease, we know nothing of joy....
We bear all the burden of this life, yours and ours.... Oo-oo-oo! We
go on, and on, and on....”
Lyzhin woke and sat up in bed. What a confused, bad dream! And why did
he dream of the constable and the agent together? What nonsense! And now
while Lyzhin’s heart was throbbing violently and he was sitting on his
bed, holding his head in his hands, it seemed to him that there really
was something in common between the lives of the insurance agent and the
constable. Don’t they really go side by side holding each other up? Some
tie unseen, but significant and essential, existed between them, and
even between them and Von Taunitz and between all men--all men; in this
life, even in the remotest desert, nothing is accidental, everything
is full of one common idea, everything has one soul, one aim, and to
understand it it is not enough to think, it is not enough to reason, one
must have also, it seems, the gift of insight into life, a gift which is
evidently not bestowed on all. And the unhappy man who had broken
down, who had killed himself--the “neurasthenic,” as the doctor called
him--and the old peasant who spent every day of his life going from one
man to another, were only accidental, were only fragments of life for
one who thought of his own life as accidental, but were parts of one
organism--marvelous and rational--for one who thought of his own life as
part of that universal whole and understood it. So thought Lyzhin, and
it was a thought that had long lain hidden in his soul, and only now it
was unfolded broadly and clearly to his consciousness.
He lay down and began to drop asleep; and again they were going along
together, singing: “We go on, and on, and on.... We take from life
what is hardest and bitterest in it, and we leave you what is easy and
joyful; and sitting at supper, you can coldly and sensibly discuss why
we suffer and perish, and why we are not as sound and as satisfied as
you.”
What they were singing had occurred to his mind before, but the thought
was somewhere in the background behind his other thoughts, and flickered
timidly like a faraway light in foggy weather. And he felt that this
suicide and the peasant’s sufferings lay upon his conscience, too; to
resign himself to the fact that these people, submissive to their fate,
should take up the burden of what was hardest and gloomiest in life--how
awful it was! To accept this, and to desire for himself a life full
of light and movement among happy and contented people, and to be
continually dreaming of such, means dreaming of fresh suicides of men
crushed by toil and anxiety, or of men weak and outcast whom people only
talk of sometimes at supper with annoyance or mockery, without going to
their help.... And again:
“We go on, and on, and on...” as though someone were beating with a
hammer on his temples.
He woke early in the morning with a headache, roused by a noise; in the
next room Von Taunitz was saying loudly to the doctor:
“It’s impossible for you to go now. Look what’s going on outside.
Don’t argue, you had better ask the coachman; he won’t take you in such
weather for a million.”
“But it’s only two miles,” said the doctor in an imploring voice.
“Well, if it were only half a mile. If you can’t, then you can’t.
Directly you drive out of the gates it is perfect hell, you would be off
the road in a minute. Nothing will induce me to let you go, you can say
what you like.”
“It’s bound to be quieter towards evening,” said the peasant who was
heating the stove.
And in the next room the doctor began talking of the rigorous climate
and its influence on the character of the Russian, of the long
winters which, by preventing movement from place to place, hinder
the intellectual development of the people; and Lyzhin listened with
vexation to these observations and looked out of window at the snow
drifts which were piled on the fence. He gazed at the white dust which
covered the whole visible expanse, at the trees which bowed their heads
despairingly to right and then to left, listened to the howling and the
banging, and thought gloomily:
“Well, what moral can be drawn from it? It’s a blizzard and that is all
about it....”
At midday they had lunch, then wandered aimlessly about the house; they
went to the windows.
“And Lesnitsky is lying there,” thought Lyzhin, watching the whirling
snow, which raced furiously round and round upon the drifts. “Lesnitsky
is lying there, the witnesses are waiting....”
They talked of the weather, saying that the snowstorm usually lasted
two days and nights, rarely longer. At six o’clock they had dinner, then
they played cards, sang, danced; at last they had supper. The day was
over, they went to bed.
In the night, towards morning, it all subsided. When they got up and
looked out of window, the bare willows with their weakly drooping
branches were standing perfectly motionless; it was dull and still, as
though nature now were ashamed of its orgy, of its mad nights, and the
license it had given to its passions. The horses, harnessed tandem, had
been waiting at the front door since five o’clock in the morning. When
it was fully daylight the doctor and the examining magistrate put on
their fur coats and felt boots, and, saying good-by to their host, went
out.
At the steps beside the coachman stood the familiar figure of the
constable, Ilya Loshadin, with an old leather bag across his shoulder
and no cap on his head, covered with snow all over, and his face was
red and wet with perspiration. The footman who had come out to help the
gentlemen and cover their legs looked at him sternly and said:
“What are you standing here for, you old devil? Get away!”
“Your honor, the people are anxious,” said Loshadin, smiling naively all
over his face, and evidently pleased at seeing at last the people he
had waited for so long. “The people are very uneasy, the children are
crying.... They thought, your honor, that you had gone back to the
town again. Show us the heavenly mercy, our benefactors!...”
The doctor and the examining magistrate said nothing, got into the
sledge, and drove to Syrnya.