LIGHTS

THE dog was barking excitedly outside. And Ananyev the engineer,

his assistant called Von Schtenberg, and I went out of the hut to

see at whom it was barking. I was the visitor, and might have

remained indoors, but I must confess my head was a little dizzy

from the wine I had drunk, and I was glad to get a breath of fresh

air.

"There is nobody here," said Ananyev when we went out. "Why are you

telling stories, Azorka? You fool!"

There was not a soul in sight.

"The fool," Azorka, a black house-dog, probably conscious of his

guilt in barking for nothing and anxious to propitiate us, approached

us, diffidently wagging his tail. The engineer bent down and touched

him between his ears.

"Why are you barking for nothing, creature?" he said in the tone

in which good-natured people talk to children and dogs. "Have you

had a bad dream or what? Here, doctor, let me commend to your

attention," he said, turning to me, "a wonderfully nervous subject!

Would you believe it, he can't endure solitude--he is always

having terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when you

shout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics."

"Yes, a dog of refined feelings," the student chimed in.

Azorka must have understood that the conversation was concerning

him. He turned his head upwards and grinned plaintively, as though

to say, "Yes, at times I suffer unbearably, but please excuse it!"

It was an August night, there were stars, but it was dark. Owing

to the fact that I had never in my life been in such exceptional

surroundings, as I had chanced to come into now, the starry night

seemed to me gloomy, inhospitable, and darker than it was in reality.

I was on a railway line which was still in process of construction.

The high, half-finished embankment, the mounds of sand, clay, and

rubble, the holes, the wheel-barrows standing here and there, the

flat tops of the mud huts in which the workmen lived--all this

muddle, coloured to one tint by the darkness, gave the earth a

strange, wild aspect that suggested the times of chaos. There was

so little order in all that lay before me that it was somehow strange

in the midst of the hideously excavated, grotesque-looking earth

to see the silhouettes of human beings and the slender telegraph

posts. Both spoiled the ensemble of the picture, and seemed to

belong to a different world. It was still, and the only sound came

from the telegraph wire droning its wearisome refrain somewhere

very high above our heads.

We climbed up on the embankment and from its height looked down

upon the earth. A hundred yards away where the pits, holes, and

mounds melted into the darkness of the night, a dim light was

twinkling. Beyond it gleamed another light, beyond that a third,

then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side--probably

the windows of some hut--and a long series of such lights,

growing continually closer and dimmer, stretched along the line to

the very horizon, then turned in a semicircle to the left and

disappeared in the darkness of the distance. The lights were

motionless. There seemed to be something in common between them and

the stillness of the night and the disconsolate song of the telegraph

wire. It seemed as though some weighty secret were buried under the

embankment and only the lights, the night, and the wires knew of

it.

"How glorious, O Lord!" sighed Ananyev; "such space and beauty that

one can't tear oneself away! And what an embankment! It's not an

embankment, my dear fellow, but a regular Mont Blanc. It's costing

millions. . . ."

Going into ecstasies over the lights and the embankment that was

costing millions, intoxicated by the wine and his sentimental mood,

the engineer slapped Von Schtenberg on the shoulder and went on in

a jocose tone:

"Well, Mihail Mihailitch, lost in reveries? No doubt it is pleasant

to look at the work of one's own hands, eh? Last year this very

spot was bare steppe, not a sight of human life, and now look: life

. . . civilisation. . . And how splendid it all is, upon my soul!

You and I are building a railway, and after we are gone, in another

century or two, good men will build a factory, a school, a hospital,

and things will begin to move! Eh!"

The student stood motionless with his hands thrust in his pockets,

and did not take his eyes off the lights. He was not listening to

the engineer, but was thinking, and was apparently in the mood in

which one does not want to speak or to listen. After a prolonged

silence he turned to me and said quietly:

"Do you know what those endless lights are like? They make me think

of something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago, something

like the camps of the Amalekites or the Philistines. It is as though

some people of the Old Testament had pitched their camp and were

waiting for morning to fight with Saul or David. All that is wanting

to complete the illusion is the blare of trumpets and sentries

calling to one another in some Ethiopian language."

And, as though of design, the wind fluttered over the line and

brought a sound like the clank of weapons. A silence followed. I

don't know what the engineer and the student were thinking of, but

it seemed to me already that I actually saw before me something

long dead and even heard the sentry talking in an unknown tongue.

My imagination hastened to picture the tents, the strange people,

their clothes, their armour.

"Yes," muttered the student pensively, "once Philistines and

Amalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing their

part, and now no trace of them remains. So it will be with us. Now

we are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but two

thousand years will pass--and of this embankment and of all those

men, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain.

In reality, it's awful!"

"You must drop those thoughts . . ." said the engineer gravely and

admonishingly.

"Why?"

"Because. . . . Thoughts like that are for the end of life, not for

the beginning of it. You are too young for them."

"Why so?" repeated the student.

"All these thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance and

the aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of the

shadows of the grave, and so on, all such lofty thoughts, I tell

you, my dear fellow, are good and natural in old age when they come

as the product of years of inner travail, and are won by suffering

and really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on the

threshold of real life they are simply a calamity! A calamity!"

Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand. "To my mind it is better

at your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to think

on these lines. I am speaking seriously, Baron. And I have been

meaning to speak to you about it for a long time, for I noticed

from the very first day of our acquaintance your partiality for

these damnable ideas!"

"Good gracious, why are they damnable?" the student asked with a

smile, and from his voice and his face I could see that he asked

the question from simple politeness, and that the discussion raised

by the engineer did not interest him in the least.

I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was dreaming that immediately

after our walk we should wish each other good-night and go to bed,

but my dream was not quickly realised. When we had returned to the

hut the engineer put away the empty bottles and took out of a large

wicker hamper two full ones, and uncorking them, sat down to his

work-table with the evident intention of going on drinking, talking,

and working. Sipping a little from his glass, he made pencil notes

on some plans and went on pointing out to the student that the

latter's way of thinking was not what it should be. The student sat

beside him checking accounts and saying nothing. He, like me, had

no inclination to speak or to listen. That I might not interfere

with their work, I sat away from the table on the engineer's

crooked-legged travelling bedstead, feeling bored and expecting

every moment that they would suggest I should go to bed. It was

going on for one o'clock.

Having nothing to do, I watched my new acquaintances. I had never

seen Ananyev or the student before. I had only made their acquaintance

on the night I have described. Late in the evening I was returning

on horseback from a fair to the house of a landowner with whom I

was staying, had got on the wrong road in the dark and lost my way.

Going round and round by the railway line and seeing how dark the

night was becoming, I thought of the "barefoot railway roughs," who

lie in wait for travellers on foot and on horseback, was frightened,

and knocked at the first hut I came to. There I was cordially

received by Ananyev and the student. As is usually the case with

strangers casually brought together, we quickly became acquainted,

grew friendly and at first over the tea and afterward over the wine,

began to feel as though we had known each other for years. At the

end of an hour or so, I knew who they were and how fate had brought

them from town to the far-away steppe; and they knew who I was,

what my occupation and my way of thinking.

Nikolay Anastasyevitch Ananyev, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered,

thick-set man, and, judging from his appearance, he had, like

Othello, begun the "descent into the vale of years," and was growing

rather too stout. He was just at that stage which old match-making

women mean when they speak of "a man in the prime of his age," that

is, he was neither young nor old, was fond of good fare, good liquor,

and praising the past, panted a little as he walked, snored loudly

when he was asleep, and in his manner with those surrounding him

displayed that calm imperturbable good humour which is always

acquired by decent people by the time they have reached the grade

of a staff officer and begun to grow stout. His hair and beard were

far from being grey, but already, with a condescension of which he

was unconscious, he addressed young men as "my dear boy" and felt

himself entitled to lecture them good-humouredly about their way

of thinking. His movements and his voice were calm, smooth, and

self-confident, as they are in a man who is thoroughly well aware

that he has got his feet firmly planted on the right road, that he

has definite work, a secure living, a settled outlook. . . . His

sunburnt, thicknosed face and muscular neck seemed to say: "I am

well fed, healthy, satisfied with myself, and the time will come

when you young people too, will be well-fed, healthy, and satisfied

with yourselves. . . ." He was dressed in a cotton shirt with the

collar awry and in full linen trousers thrust into his high boots.

From certain trifles, as for instance, from his coloured worsted

girdle, his embroidered collar, and the patch on his elbow, I was

able to guess that he was married and in all probability tenderly

loved by his wife.

Baron Von Schtenberg, a student of the Institute of Transport, was

a young man of about three or four and twenty. Only his fair hair

and scanty beard, and, perhaps, a certain coarseness and frigidity

in his features showed traces of his descent from Barons of the

Baltic provinces; everything else--his name, Mihail Mihailovitch,

his religion, his ideas, his manners, and the expression of his

face were purely Russian. Wearing, like Ananyev, a cotton shirt and

high boots, with his round shoulders, his hair left uncut, and his

sunburnt face, he did not look like a student or a Baron, but like

an ordinary Russian workman. His words and gestures were few, he

drank reluctantly without relish, checked the accounts mechanically,

and seemed all the while to be thinking of something else. His

movements and voice were calm, and smooth too, but his calmness was

of a different kind from the engineer's. His sunburnt, slightly

ironical, dreamy face, his eyes which looked up from under his

brows, and his whole figure were expressive of spiritual

stagnatio--mental sloth. He looked as though it did not matter to him in

the least whether the light were burning before him or not, whether

the wine were nice or nasty, and whether the accounts he was checking

were correct or not. . . . And on his intelligent, calm face I read:

"I don't see so far any good in definite work, a secure living, and

a settled outlook. It's all nonsense. I was in Petersburg, now I

am sitting here in this hut, in the autumn I shall go back to

Petersburg, then in the spring here again. . . . What sense there

is in all that I don't know, and no one knows. . . . And so it's

no use talking about it. . . ."

He listened to the engineer without interest, with the condescending

indifference with which cadets in the senior classes listen to an

effusive and good-natured old attendant. It seemed as though there

were nothing new to him in what the engineer said, and that if he

had not himself been too lazy to talk, he would have said something

newer and cleverer. Meanwhile Ananyev would not desist. He had by

now laid aside his good-humoured, jocose tone and spoke seriously,

even with a fervour which was quite out of keeping with his expression

of calmness. Apparently he had no distaste for abstract subjects,

was fond of them, indeed, but had neither skill nor practice in the

handling of them. And this lack of practice was so pronounced in

his talk that I did not always grasp his meaning at once.

"I hate those ideas with all my heart!" he said, "I was infected

by them myself in my youth, I have not quite got rid of them even

now, and I tell you--perhaps because I am stupid and such thoughts

were not the right food for my mind--they did me nothing but harm.

That's easy to understand! Thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of

the insignificance and transitoriness of the visible world, Solomon's

'vanity of vanities' have been, and are to this day, the highest

and final stage in the realm of thought. The thinker reaches that

stage and--comes to a halt! There is nowhere further to go. The

activity of the normal brain is completed with this, and that is

natural and in the order of things. Our misfortune is that we begin

thinking at that end. What normal people end with we begin with.

From the first start, as soon as the brain begins working independently,

we mount to the very topmost, final step and refuse to know anything

about the steps below."

"What harm is there in that?" said the student.

"But you must understand that it's abnormal," shouted Ananyev,

looking at him almost wrathfully. "If we find means of mounting to

the topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole

long ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds,

and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age such

reflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step of

your rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down this

minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a page

before the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare,

and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know you

will die, that Shakespeare and Darwin have died too, that their

thoughts have not saved them, nor the earth, nor you, and that if

life is deprived of meaning in that way, all science, poetry, and

exalted thoughts seem only useless diversions, the idle playthings

of grown up people; and you leave off reading at the second page.

Now, let us suppose that people come to you as an intelligent man

and ask your opinion about war, for instance: whether it is desirable,

whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terrible

question you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself to

some commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, it

makes absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands of

people die a violent death, or a natural one: the results are the

same--ashes and oblivion. You and I are building a railway line.

What's the use, one may ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing,

rising above the hackneyed thing, feeling for the workmen, stealing

or not stealing, when we know that this railway line will turn to

dust within two thousand years, and so on, and so on. . . . You

must admit that with such a disastrous way of looking at things

there can be no progress, no science, no art, nor even thought

itself. We fancy that we are cleverer than the crowd, and than

Shakespeare. In reality our thinking leads to nothing because we

have no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there is

nowhere higher to go, so our brain stands at the freezing point--neither

up nor down; I was in bondage to these ideas for six years,

and by all that is holy, I never read a sensible book all that time,

did not gain a ha'porth of wisdom, and did not raise my moral

standard an inch. Was not that disastrous? Moreover, besides being

corrupted ourselves, we bring poison into the lives of those

surrounding us. It would be all right if, with our pessimism, we

renounced life, went to live in a cave, or made haste to die, but,

as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live, feel, love

women, bring up children, construct railways!"

"Our thoughts make no one hot or cold," the student said reluctantly.

"Ah! there you are again!--do stop it! You have not yet had a

good sniff at life. But when you have lived as long as I have you

will know a thing or two! Our theory of life is not so innocent as

you suppose. In practical life, in contact with human beings, it

leads to nothing but horrors and follies. It has been my lot to

pass through experiences which I would not wish a wicked Tatar to

endure."

"For instance?" I asked.

"For instance?" repeated the engineer.

He thought a minute, smiled and said:

"For instance, take this example. More correctly, it is not an

example, but a regular drama, with a plot and a dénouement. An

excellent lesson! Ah, what a lesson!"

He poured out wine for himself and us, emptied his glass, stroked

his broad chest with his open hands, and went on, addressing himself

more to me than to the student.

"It was in the year 187--, soon after the war, and when I had just

left the University. I was going to the Caucasus, and on the way

stopped for five days in the seaside town of N. I must tell you

that I was born and grew up in that town, and so there is nothing

odd in my thinking N. extraordinarily snug, cosy, and beautiful,

though for a man from Petersburg or Moscow, life in it would be as

dreary and comfortless as in any Tchuhloma or Kashira. With melancholy

I passed by the high school where I had been a pupil; with melancholy

I walked about the very familiar park, I made a melancholy attempt

to get a nearer look at people I had not seen for a long time--all

with the same melancholy.

"Among other things, I drove out one evening to the so-called

Quarantine. It was a small mangy copse in which, at some forgotten

time of plague, there really had been a quarantine station, and

which was now the resort of summer visitors. It was a drive of three

miles from the town along a good soft road. As one drove along one

saw on the left the blue sea, on the right the unending gloomy

steppe; there was plenty of air to breathe, and wide views for the

eyes to rest on. The copse itself lay on the seashore. Dismissing

my cabman, I went in at the familiar gates and first turned along

an avenue leading to a little stone summer-house which I had been

fond of in my childhood. In my opinion that round, heavy summer-house

on its clumsy columns, which combined the romantic charm of an old

tomb with the ungainliness of a Sobakevitch,* was the most poetical

nook in the whole town. It stood at the edge above the cliff, and

from it there was a splendid view of the sea.

*A character in Gogol's _Dead Souls.--Translator's Note._

"I sat down on the seat, and, bending over the parapet, looked down.

A path ran from the summer-house along the steep, almost overhanging

cliff, between the lumps of clay and tussocks of burdock. Where it

ended, far below on the sandy shore, low waves were languidly foaming

and softly purring. The sea was as majestic, as infinite, and as

forbidding as seven years before when I left the high school and

went from my native town to the capital; in the distance there was

a dark streak of smoke--a steamer was passing--and except for

this hardly visible and motionless streak and the sea-swallows that

flitted over the water, there was nothing to give life to the

monotonous view of sea and sky. To right and left of the summer-house

stretched uneven clay cliffs.

"You know that when a man in a melancholy mood is left _tête-à-tête_

with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, there

is always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a conviction

that he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatches

up a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing that

comes handy. And that, I suppose, is why all convenient solitary

nooks like my summer-house are always scrawled over in pencil or

carved with penknives. I remember as though it were to-day; looking

at the parapet I read: 'Ivan Korolkov, May 16, 1876.' Beside Korolkov

some local dreamer had scribbled freely, adding:

"'He stood on the desolate ocean's strand,

While his soul was filled with imaginings grand.'

And his handwriting was dreamy, limp like wet silk. An individual

called Kross, probably an insignificant, little man, felt his

unimportance so deeply that he gave full licence to his penknife

and carved his name in deep letters an inch high. I took a pencil

out of my pocket mechanically, and I too scribbled on one of the

columns. All that is irrelevant, however. . . You must forgive

me--I don't know how to tell a story briefly.

"I was sad and a little bored. Boredom, the stillness, and the

purring of the sea gradually brought me to the line of thought we

have been discussing. At that period, towards the end of the

'seventies, it had begun to be fashionable with the public, and

later, at the beginning of the 'eighties, it gradually passed from

the general public into literature, science, and politics. I was

no more than twenty-six at the time, but I knew perfectly well that

life was aimless and had no meaning, that everything was a deception

and an illusion, that in its essential nature and results a life

of penal servitude in Sahalin was not in any way different from a

life spent in Nice, that the difference between the brain of a Kant

and the brain of a fly was of no real significance, that no one in

this world is righteous or guilty, that everything was stuff and

nonsense and damn it all! I lived as though I were doing a favour

to some unseen power which compelled me to live, and to which I

seemed to say: 'Look, I don't care a straw for life, but I am

living!' I thought on one definite line, but in all sorts of keys,

and in that respect I was like the subtle gourmand who could prepare

a hundred appetising dishes from nothing but potatoes. There is no

doubt that I was one-sided and even to some extent narrow, but I

fancied at the time that my intellectual horizon had neither beginning

nor end, and that my thought was as boundless as the sea. Well, as

far as I can judge by myself, the philosophy of which we are speaking

has something alluring, narcotic in its nature, like tobacco or

morphia. It becomes a habit, a craving. You take advantage of every

minute of solitude to gloat over thoughts of the aimlessness of

life and the darkness of the grave. While I was sitting in the

summer-house, Greek children with long noses were decorously walking

about the avenues. I took advantage of the occasion and, looking

at them, began reflecting in this style:

"'Why are these children born, and what are they living for? Is

there any sort of meaning in their existence? They grow up, without

themselves knowing what for; they will live in this God-forsaken,

comfortless hole for no sort of reason, and then they will die. . . .'

"And I actually felt vexed with those children because they were

walking about decorously and talking with dignity, as though they

did not hold their little colourless lives so cheap and knew what

they were living for. . . . I remember that far away at the end of

an avenue three feminine figures came into sight. Three young ladies,

one in a pink dress, two in white, were walking arm-in-arm, talking

and laughing. Looking after them, I thought:

"'It wouldn't be bad to have an affair with some woman for a couple

of days in this dull place.'

"I recalled by the way that it was three weeks since I had visited

my Petersburg lady, and thought that a passing love affair would

come in very appropriately for me just now. The young lady in white

in the middle was rather younger and better looking than her

companions, and judging by her manners and her laugh, she was a

high-school girl in an upper form. I looked, not without impure

thoughts, at her bust, and at the same time reflected about her:

'She will be trained in music and manners, she will be married to

some Greek--God help us!--will lead a grey, stupid, comfortless

life, will bring into the world a crowd of children without knowing

why, and then will die. An absurd life!'

"I must say that as a rule I was a great hand at combining my lofty

ideas with the lowest prose.

"Thoughts of the darkness of the grave did not prevent me from

giving busts and legs their full due. Our dear Baron's exalted ideas

do not prevent him from going on Saturdays to Vukolovka on amatory

expeditions. To tell the honest truth, as far as I remember, my

attitude to women was most insulting. Now, when I think of that

high-school girl, I blush for my thoughts then, but at the time my

conscience was perfectly untroubled. I, the son of honourable

parents, a Christian, who had received a superior education, not

naturally wicked or stupid, felt not the slightest uneasiness when

I paid women _Blutgeld_, as the Germans call it, or when I followed

high-school girls with insulting looks. . . . The trouble is that

youth makes its demands, and our philosophy has nothing in principle

against those demands, whether they are good or whether they are

loathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death inevitable

is not interested in the struggle against nature or the conception

of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will die and

rot just the same. . . . Secondly, my friends, our philosophy instils

even into very young people what is called reasonableness. The

predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst

us. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty

analysis. Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold

people--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity.

That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, and

capable of love. Thirdly, our philosophy denies the significance

of each individual personality. It's easy to see that if I deny the

personality of some Natalya Stepanovna, it's absolutely nothing to

me whether she is insulted or not. To-day one insults her dignity

as a human being and pays her _Blutgeld_, and next day thinks no

more of her.

"So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Another

woman's figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her head

uncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walked

along the avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking hold

of the parapet, looked indifferently below and into the distance

over the sea. As she came in she paid no attention to me, as though

she did not notice me. I scrutinised her from foot to head (not

from head to foot, as one scrutinises men) and found that she was

young, not more than five-and-twenty, nice-looking, with a good

figure, in all probability married and belonging to the class of

respectable women. She was dressed as though she were at home, but

fashionably and with taste, as ladies are, as a rule, in N.

"'This one would do nicely,' I thought, looking at her handsome

figure and her arms; 'she is all right. . . . She is probably the

wife of some doctor or schoolmaster. . . .'

"But to make up to her--that is, to make her the heroine of one

of those impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone--was

not easy and, indeed, hardly possible. I felt that as I gazed at

her face. The way she looked, and the expression of her face,

suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky had

bored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight. She seemed to be

tired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face had

not even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which one

sees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of the

presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.

"The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, sat

down on a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw that

she had no thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance,

did not arouse in her even simple curiosity. But yet I made up my

mind to speak to her, and asked: 'Madam, allow me to ask you at

what time do the waggonettes go from here to the town?'

"'At ten or eleven, I believe. . . .'"

"I thanked her. She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly there

was a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on her

passionless face. . . . I made haste to assume an indifferent

expression and to fall into a suitable attitude; she was catching

on! She suddenly jumped up from the seat, as though something had

bitten her, and examining me hurriedly, with a gentle smile, asked

timidly:

"'Oh, aren't you Ananyev?'

"'Yes, I am Ananyev,' I answered.

"'And don't you recognise me? No?'

"I was a little confused. I looked intently at her, and--would

you believe it?--I recognised her not from her face nor her figure,

but from her gentle, weary smile. It was Natalya Stepanovna, or,

as she was called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head over

ears in love with seven or eight years before, when I was wearing

the uniform of a high-school boy. The doings of far, vanished days,

the days of long ago. . . . I remember this Kisotchka, a thin little

high-school girl of fifteen or sixteen, when she was something just

for a schoolboy's taste, created by nature especially for Platonic

love. What a charming little girl she was! Pale, fragile, light--she

looked as though a breath would send her flying like a feather

to the skies--a gentle, perplexed face, little hands, soft long

hair to her belt, a waist as thin as a wasp's--altogether something

ethereal, transparent like moonlight--in fact, from the point of

view of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . . . Wasn't I in love

with her! I did not sleep at night. I wrote verses. . . . Sometimes

in the evenings she would sit on a seat in the park while we

schoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently; in response to our

compliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would shrink

nervously from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile gently,

and at such times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten. As

we gazed at her every one of us had a desire to caress her and

stroke her like a cat, hence her nickname of Kisotchka.

"In the course of the seven or eight years since we had met, Kisotchka

had greatly changed. She had grown more robust and stouter, and had

quite lost the resemblance to a soft, fluffy kitten. It was not

that her features looked old or faded, but they had somehow lost

their brilliance and looked sterner, her hair seemed shorter, she

looked taller, and her shoulders were quite twice as broad, and

what was most striking, there was already in her face the expression

of motherliness and resignation commonly seen in respectable women

of her age, and this, of course, I had never seen in her before. . . .

In short, of the school-girlish and the Platonic her face had

kept the gentle smile and nothing more. . . .

"We got into conversation. Learning that I was already an engineer,

Kisotchka was immensely delighted.

"'How good that is!' she said, looking joyfully into my face. 'Ah,

how good! And how splendid you all are! Of all who left with you,

not one has been a failure--they have all turned out well. One

an engineer, another a doctor, a third a teacher, another, they

say, is a celebrated singer in Petersburg. . . . You are all splendid,

all of you. . . . Ah, how good that is!'

"Kisotchka's eyes shone with genuine goodwill and gladness. She was

admiring me like an elder sister or a former governess. 'While I

looked at her sweet face and thought, It wouldn't be bad to get

hold of her to-day!'

"'Do you remember, Natalya Stepanovna,' I asked her, 'how I once

brought you in the park a bouquet with a note in it? You read my

note, and such a look of bewilderment came into your face. . . .'

"'No, I don't remember that,' she said, laughing. 'But I remember

how you wanted to challenge Florens to a duel over me. . . .'

"'Well, would you believe it, I don't remember that. . . .'

"'Well, that's all over and done with . . .' sighed Kisotchka. 'At

one time I was your idol, and now it is my turn to look up to all

of you. . . .'

"From further conversation I learned that two years after leaving

the high school, Kisotchka had been married to a resident in the

town who was half Greek, half Russian, had a post either in the

bank or in the insurance society, and also carried on a trade in

corn. He had a strange surname, something in the style of Populaki

or Skarandopulo. . . . Goodness only knows--I have forgotten. . . .

As a matter of fact, Kisotchka spoke little and with reluctance

about herself. The conversation was only about me. She asked me

about the College of Engineering, about my comrades, about Petersburg,

about my plans, and everything I said moved her to eager delight

and exclamations of, 'Oh, how good that is!'

"We went down to the sea and walked over the sands; then when the

night air began to blow chill and damp from the sea we climbed up

again. All the while our talk was of me and of the past. We walked

about until the reflection of the sunset had died away from the

windows of the summer villas.

"'Come in and have some tea,' Kisotchka suggested. 'The samovar

must have been on the table long ago. . . . I am alone at home,'

she said, as her villa came into sight through the green of the

acacias. 'My husband is always in the town and only comes home at

night, and not always then, and I must own that I am so dull that

it's simply deadly.'

"I followed her in, admiring her back and shoulders. I was glad

that she was married. Married women are better material for temporary

love affairs than girls. I was also pleased that her husband was

not at home. At the same time I felt that the affair would not come

off. . . .

"We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low ceilings,

and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians like

having at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniture

which they are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), but

from certain details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husband

were not badly off, and must be spending five or six thousand roubles

a year. I remember that in the middle of the room which Kisotchka

called the dining-room there was a round table, supported for some

reason on six legs, and on it a samovar and cups. At the edge of

the table lay an open book, a pencil, and an exercise book. I glanced

at the book and recognised it as 'Malinin and Burenin's Arithmetical

Examples.' It was open, as I now remember, at the 'Rules of Compound

Interest.'

"'To whom are you giving lessons?' I asked Kisotchka.

"'Nobody,' she answered. 'I am just doing some. . . . I have nothing

to do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums.'

"'Have you any children?'

"'I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.'

"We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good

it was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success.

And the more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the

stronger was my conviction that I should go away without having

gained my object. I was a connoisseur in love affairs in those days,

and could accurately gauge my chances of success. You can boldly

reckon on success if you are tracking down a fool or a woman as

much on the look out for new experiences and sensations as yourself,

or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If you come across a

sensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression of weary

submission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your presence,

and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To succeed

in that case needs longer than one day.

"And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by

day. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me

too, and the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not

at home, no servants visible, stillness around. . . . Though I had

little confidence in success, I made up my mind to begin the attack

anyway. First of all it was necessary to get into a familiar tone

and to change Kisotchka's lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous

one.

"'Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,' I began.

'Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the

sake of old times, to call you Kisotchka.'

"She allowed me.

"'Tell me, please, Kisotchka,' I went on, 'what is the matter with

all the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days they

were all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asks

about anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked at

human nature. . . . One young lady has eloped with an officer;

another has run away and carried off a high-school boy with her;

another--a married woman--has run away from her husband with

an actor; a fourth has left her husband and gone off with an officer,

and so on and so on. It's a regular epidemic! If it goes on like

this there won't be a girl or a young woman left in your town!'

"I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in

response I should have gone on in this style: 'You had better look

out, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!'

She would have dropped her eyes and said: 'As though anyone would

care to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking

. . . .' And I should have said: 'Nonsense, Kisotchka--I for one

should be delighted!' And so on in that style, and it would all

have gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; on

the contrary, she looked grave and sighed.

"'All you have been told is true,' she said. 'My cousin Sonya ran

away from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is wrong. . . .

Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but I do

not condemn them or blame them. . . . Circumstances are sometimes

too strong for anyone!'

"'That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce a

regular epidemic?'

"'It's very simple and easy to understand,' replied Kisotchka,

raising her eyebrows. 'There is absolutely nothing for us educated

girls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to go

to the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact,

as men do. They have to be married. . . . And whom would you have

them marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to the

University, never to return to your native town again, and you marry

in Petersburg or Moscow, while the girls remain. . . . To whom are

they to be married? Why, in the absence of decent cultured men,

goodness knows what sort of men they marry--stockbrokers and such

people of all kinds, who can do nothing but drink and get into rows

at the club. . . . A girl married like that, at random. . . . And

what is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated,

cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meets

a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor--well, she

gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs

away from her husband. And one can't condemn her!'

"'If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?' I asked.

"'Yes, of course,' said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know every

girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogether

life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is

stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here

they laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if

they could see into her soul they would not laugh. . . .'"

Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one,

then howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the

wall of the hut. . . . Ananyev's face was puckered with pity; he

broke off his story and went out. For two minutes he could be heard

outside comforting his dog. "Good dog! poor dog!"

"Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking," said Von Schtenberg,

laughing. "He is a good fellow," he added after a brief silence.

Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling

and stroking his chest, went on:

"And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put

off my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned

myself to my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is

more, under the influence of Kisotchka's voice, the evening air,

and the stillness, I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental

mood. I remember I sat in an easy chair by the wide-open window and

glanced at the trees and darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias

and the lime trees were just the same as they had been eight years

before; just as then, in the days of my childhood, somewhere far

away there was the tinkling of a wretched piano, and the public had

just the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the avenues, but

the people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked now

not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboys

and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. When

to my inquiries about acquaintances I five times received from

Kisotchka the answer, 'He is dead,' my melancholy changed into the

feeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sitting

there at the window, looking at the promenading public and listening

to the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first time

in my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replace

another, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eight

years may have in a man's life!

"Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off,

grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about something

or other. Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness.

And time passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of

the acacias and lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer

walking up and down the avenues, the piano was silent and the only

sound was the even murmur of the sea.

"Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make much

of him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractive

and he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talk

and talk and talk. . . . His hosts cannot keep their eyes open,

it's past their bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That was

what I did. Once I chanced to look at the clock; it was half-past

ten. I began saying good-bye.

"'Have another glass before your walk,' said Kisotchka.

"I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot it

was time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men's

voices, footsteps and the clank of spurs.

"'I think my husband has come in . . . .' said Kisotchka listening.

"The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I saw

two men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout,

solid, dark man with a hooked nose, wearing a straw hat, and the

other a young officer in a white tunic. As they passed the door

they both glanced casually and indifferently at Kisotchka and me,

and I fancied both of them were drunk.

"'She told you a lie then, and you believed her!' we heard a loud

voice with a marked nasal twang say a minute later. 'To begin with,

it wasn't at the big club but at the little one.'

"'You are angry, Jupiter, so you are wrong . . . .' said another

voice, obviously the officer's, laughing and coughing. 'I say, can

I stay the night? Tell me honestly, shall I be in your way?'

"'What a question! Not only you can, but you must. What will you

have, beer or wine?'

"They were sitting two rooms away from us, talking loudly, and

apparently feeling no interest in Kisotchka or her visitor. A

perceptible change came over Kisotchka on her husband's arrival.

At first she flushed red, then her face wore a timid, guilty

expression; she seemed to be troubled by some anxiety, and I began

to fancy that she was ashamed to show me her husband and wanted me

to go.

"I began taking leave. Kisotchka saw me to the front door. I remember

well her gentle mournful smile and kind patient eyes as she pressed

my hand and said:

"'Most likely we shall never see each other again. Well, God give

you every blessing. Thank you!'

"Not one sigh, not one fine phrase. As she said good-bye she was

holding the candle in her hand; patches of light danced over her

face and neck, as though chasing her mournful smile. I pictured to

myself the old Kisotchka whom one used to want to stroke like a

cat, I looked intently at the present Kisotchka, and for some reason

recalled her words: 'Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has

laid on him.' And I had a pang at my heart. I instinctively guessed

how it was, and my conscience whispered to me that I, in my happiness

and indifference, was face to face with a good, warm-hearted, loving

creature, who was broken by suffering.

"I said good-bye and went to the gate. By now it was quite dark.

In the south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets dark

rapidly. Towards ten o'clock it is so dark that you can't see an

inch before your nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before,

almost groping, I found my way to the gate.

"'Cab!' I shouted, going out of the gate; not a sound, not a sigh

in answer. . . . 'Cab,' I repeated, 'hey, Cab!'

"But there was no cab of any description. The silence of the grave.

I could hear nothing but the murmur of the drowsy sea and the beating

of my heart from the wine. Lifting my eyes to the sky I found not

a single star. It was dark and sullen. Evidently the sky was covered

with clouds. For some reason I shrugged my shoulders, smiling

foolishly, and once more, not quite so resolutely, shouted for a

cab.

"The echo answered me. A walk of three miles across open country

and in the pitch dark was not an agreeable prospect. Before making

up my mind to walk, I spent a long time deliberating and shouting

for a cab; then, shrugging my shoulders, I walked lazily back to

the copse, with no definite object in my mind. It was dreadfully

dark in the copse. Here and there between the trees the windows of

the summer villas glowed a dull red. A raven, disturbed by my steps

and the matches with which I lighted my way to the summer-house,

flew from tree to tree and rustled among the leaves. I felt vexed

and ashamed, and the raven seemed to understand this, and croaked

'krrra!' I was vexed that I had to walk, and ashamed that I had

stayed on at Kisotchka's, chatting like a boy.

"I made my way to the summer-house, felt for the seat and sat down.

Far below me, behind a veil of thick darkness, the sea kept up a

low angry growl. I remember that, as though I were blind, I could

see neither sky nor sea, nor even the summer-house in which I was

sitting. And it seemed to me as though the whole world consisted

only of the thoughts that were straying through my head, dizzy from

the wine, and of an unseen power murmuring monotonously somewhere

below. And afterwards, as I sank into a doze, it began to seem that

it was not the sea murmuring, but my thoughts, and that the whole

world consisted of nothing but me. And concentrating the whole world

in myself in this way, I thought no more of cabs, of the town, and

of Kisotchka, and abandoned myself to the sensation I was so fond

of: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation when you feel that

in the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone exist. It is a

proud, demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians whose thoughts

and sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as their plains,

their forests, and their snow. If I had been an artist I should

certainly have depicted the expression of a Russian's face when he

sits motionless and, with his legs under him and his head clasped

in his hands, abandons himself to this sensation. . . . And together

with this sensation come thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of

death, and of the darkness of the grave. . . . The thoughts are not

worth a brass farthing, but the expression of face must be fine. . . .

"While I was sitting and dozing, unable to bring myself to get

up--I was warm and comfortable--all at once, against the even

monotonous murmur of the sea, as though upon a canvas, sounds began

to grow distinct which drew my attention from myself. . . . Someone

was coming hurriedly along the avenue. Reaching the summer-house

this someone stopped, gave a sob like a little girl, and said in

the voice of a weeping child: 'My God, when will it all end! Merciful

Heavens!'

"Judging from the voice and the weeping I took it to be a little

girl of ten or twelve. She walked irresolutely into the summer-house,

sat down, and began half-praying, half-complaining aloud. . . .

"'Merciful God!' she said, crying, 'it's unbearable. It's beyond

all endurance! I suffer in silence, but I want to live too. . . .

Oh, my God! My God!'

"And so on in the same style.

"I wanted to look at the child and speak to her. So as not to

frighten her I first gave a loud sigh and coughed, then cautiously

struck a match. . . . There was a flash of bright light in the

darkness, which lighted up the weeping figure. It was Kisotchka!"

"Marvels upon marvels!" said Von Schtenberg with a sigh. "Black

night, the murmur of the sea; she in grief, he with a sensation of

world--solitude. . . . It's too much of a good thing. . . . You

only want Circassians with daggers to complete it."

"I am not telling you a tale, but fact."

"Well, even if it is a fact . . . it all proves nothing, and there

is nothing new in it. . . ."

"Wait a little before you find fault! Let me finish," said Ananyev,

waving his hand with vexation; "don't interfere, please! I am not

telling you, but the doctor. . . . Well," he went on, addressing

me and glancing askance at the student who bent over his books and

seemed very well satisfied at having gibed at the engineer--"well,

Kisotchka was not surprised or frightened at seeing me. It seemed

as though she had known beforehand that she would find me in the

summer-house. She was breathing in gasps and trembling all over as

though in a fever, while her tear-stained face, so far as I could

distinguish it as I struck match after match, was not the intelligent,

submissive weary face I had seen before, but something different,

which I cannot understand to this day. It did not express pain, nor

anxiety, nor misery--nothing of what was expressed by her words

and her tears. . . . I must own that, probably because I did not

understand it, it looked to me senseless and as though she were

drunk.

"'I can't bear it,' muttered Kisotchka in the voice of a crying

child. 'It's too much for me, Nikolay Anastasyitch. Forgive me,

Nikolav Anastasyitch. I can't go on living like this. . . . I am

going to the town to my mother's. . . . Take me there. . . . Take

me there, for God's sake!'

"In the presence of tears I can neither speak nor be silent. I was

flustered and muttered some nonsense trying to comfort her.

"'No, no; I will go to my mother's,' said Kisotchka resolutely,

getting up and clutching my arm convulsively (her hands and her

sleeves were wet with tears). 'Forgive me, Nikolay Anastasyitch, I

am going. . . . I can bear no more. . . .'

"'Kisotchka, but there isn't a single cab,' I said. 'How can you

go?'

"'No matter, I'll walk. . . . It's not far. I can't bear it. . . .'

"I was embarrassed, but not touched. Kisotchka's tears, her trembling,

and the blank expression of her face suggested to me a trivial,

French or Little Russian melodrama, in which every ounce of cheap

shallow feeling is washed down with pints of tears.

"I didn t understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I ought

to have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear my

silence might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try to

persuade her not to go to her mother's, but to stay at home. When

people cry, they don't like their tears to be seen. And I lighted

match after match and went on striking till the box was empty. What

I wanted with this ungenerous illumination, I can't conceive to

this day. Cold-hearted people are apt to be awkward, and even stupid.

"In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off. Going out of the

gate, we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft

dusty road. It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to

the darkness, I began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old

gaunt oaks and lime trees which bordered the road. The jagged,

precipitous cliffs, intersected here and there by deep, narrow

ravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a black streak on the

right. Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like sitting

figures. It was uncanny. I looked sideways suspiciously at the

cliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the stillness of the country

alarmed my imagination. Kisotchka did not speak. She was still

trembling, and before she had gone half a mile she was exhausted

with walking and was out of breath. I too was silent.

"Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was a

deserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in which

there had once been a steam flour mill. It stood solitary on the

cliff, and by day it could be seen for a long distance, both by sea

and by land. Because it was deserted and no one lived in it, and

because there was an echo in it which distinctly repeated the steps

and voices of passers-by, it seemed mysterious. Picture me in the

dark night arm-in-arm with a woman who was running away from her

husband near this tall long monster which repeated the sound of

every step I took and stared at me fixedly with its hundred black

windows. A normal young man would have been moved to romantic

feelings in such surroundings, but I looked at the dark windows and

thought: 'All this is very impressive, but time will come when of

that building and of Kisotchka and her troubles and of me with my

thoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . . All is nonsense

and vanity. . . .'

"When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, took

her arm out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, but

in her own:

"'Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you. But

I am terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy!

It's impossible to imagine it! I don't tell you about it because

one can't talk about it. . . . Such a life, such a life! . . .'

"Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned as

though she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain.

"'Such a life!' she repeated with horror, with the cadence and the

southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women gives

to emotional speech the effect of singing. 'It is a life! Ah, my

God, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!'

"As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged her

shoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. She

spoke as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and reminded

me of a celebrated Little Russian actress.

"'Great God, it is as though I were in a pit,' she went on. 'If

one could live for one minute in happiness as other people live!

Oh, my God, my God! I have come to such disgrace that before a

stranger I am running away from my husband by night, like some

disreputable creature! Can I expect anything good after that?'

"As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyed

that she was not on good terms with her husband. 'It would be nice

to have got on into relations with her!' flitted through my mind;

and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the

way and grew more and more alluring.

"About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the

cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood

a stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived.

We passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the

gates of the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:

"'I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God bless

you, but I am going back. I am not frightened.'

"'Well, what next!' I said, disconcerted. 'If you are going, you

had better go!'

"'I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing that

mattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put all

sort of ideas into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, and

my husband said rude things to me before that officer, and I could

not bear it. . . . And what's the good of my going to the town to

my mother's? Will that make me any happier? I must go back. . . .

But never mind . . . let us go on,' said Kisotchka, and she laughed.

'It makes no difference!'

"I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an

inscription: 'The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the

grave will hear the voice of the Son of God.' I knew very well that

sooner or later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in

the white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard;

I knew that an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walking

beside me. All this I recognised distinctly, but at the same time

I was troubled by an oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka

would turn back, and that I should not manage to say to her what

had to be said. Never at any other time in my life have thoughts

of a higher order been so closely interwoven with the basest animal

prose as on that night. . . . It was horrible!

"Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High

Street, where Kisotchka's mother lived, we dismissed the cab and

walked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while

I looked at her, and I raged at myself, 'Why don't you begin? Now's

the time!' About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying,

Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears.

"'Nikolay Anastasyitch!' she said, crying and laughing and looking

at me with wet shining eyes, 'I shall never forget your sympathy

. . . . How good you are! All of you are so splendid--all of you!

Honest, great-hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!'

"She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense of

the word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with the

emotion and enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearly

written regret that she so rarely saw such people, and that God had

not vouchsafed her the bliss of being the wife of one of them. She

muttered, 'Ah, how splendid it is!' The childish gladness on her

face, the tears, the gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escaped

from under the kerchief, and the kerchief itself thrown carelessly

over her head, in the light of the street lamp reminded me of the

old Kisotchka whom one had wanted to stroke like a kitten.

"I could not restrain myself, and began stroking her hair, her

shoulders, and her hands.

"'Kisotchka, what do you want?' I muttered. 'I'll go to the ends

of the earth with you if you like! I will take you out of this hole

and give you happiness. I love you. . . . Let us go, my sweet? Yes?

Will you?'

"Kisotchka's face was flooded with bewilderment. She stepped back

from the street lamp and, completely overwhelmed, gazed at me with

wide-open eyes. I gripped her by the arm, began showering kisses

on her face, her neck, her shoulders, and went on making vows and

promises. In love affairs vows and promises are almost a physiological

necessity. There's no getting on without them. Sometimes you know

you are lying and that promises are not necessary, but still you

vow and protest. Kisotchka, utterly overwhelmed, kept staggering

back and gazing at me with round eyes.

"'Please don't! Please don't!' she muttered, holding me off with

her hands.

"I clasped her tightly in my arms. All at once she broke into

hysterical tears. And her face had the same senseless blank expression

that I had seen in the summer-house when I lighted the matches.

Without asking her consent, preventing her from speaking, I dragged

her forcibly towards my hotel. She seemed almost swooning and did

not walk, but I took her under the arms and almost carried her. . . .

I remember, as we were going up the stairs, some man with a red

band in his cap looked wonderingly at me and bowed to Kisotchka. . . ."

Ananyev flushed crimson and paused. He walked up and down near the

table in silence, scratched the back of his head with an air of

vexation, and several times shrugged his shoulders and twitched his

shoulder-blades, while a shiver ran down his huge back. The memory

was painful and made him ashamed, and he was struggling with himself.

"It's horrible!" he said, draining a glass of wine and shaking his

head. "I am told that in every introductory lecture on women's

diseases the medical students are admonished to remember that each

one of them has a mother, a sister, a fiancée, before undressing

and examining a female patient. . . . That advice would be very

good not only for medical students but for everyone who in one way

or another has to deal with a woman's life. Now that I have a wife

and a little daughter, oh, how well I understand that advice! How

I understand it, my God! You may as well hear the rest, though. . . .

As soon as she had become my mistress, Kisotchka's view of the

position was very different from mine. First of all she felt for

me a deep and passionate love. What was for me an ordinary amatory

episode was for her an absolute revolution in her life. I remember,

it seemed to me that she had gone out of her mind. Happy for the

first time in her life, looking five years younger, with an inspired

enthusiastic face, not knowing what to do with herself for happiness,

she laughed and cried and never ceased dreaming aloud how next day

we would set off for the Caucasus, then in the autumn to Petersburg;

how we would live afterwards.

"'Don't worry yourself about my husband,' she said to reassure me.

'He is bound to give me a divorce. Everyone in the town knows that

he is living with the elder Kostovitch. We will get a divorce and

be married.'

"When women love they become acclimatised and at home with people

very quickly, like cats. Kisotchka had only spent an hour and a

half in my room when she already felt as though she were at home

and was ready to treat my property as though it were her own. She

packed my things in my portmanteau, scolded me for not hanging my

new expensive overcoat on a peg instead of flinging it on a chair,

and so on.

"I looked at her, listened, and felt weariness and vexation. I was

conscious of a slight twinge of horror at the thought that a

respectable, honest, and unhappy woman had so easily, after some

three or four hours, succumbed to the first man she met. As a

respectable man, you see, I didn't like it. Then, too, I was

unpleasantly impressed by the fact that women of Kisotchka's sort,

not deep or serious, are too much in love with life, and exalt what

is in reality such a trifle as love for a man to the level of bliss,

misery, a complete revolution in life. . . . Moreover, now that I

was satisfied, I was vexed with myself for having been so stupid

as to get entangled with a woman whom I should have to deceive. And

in spite of my disorderly life I must observe that I could not bear

telling lies.

"I remember that Kisotchka sat down at my feet, laid her head on

my knees, and, looking at me with shining, loving eyes, asked:

"'Kolya, do you love me? Very, very much?'

"And she laughed with happiness. . . . This struck me as sentimental,

affected, and not clever; and meanwhile I was already inclined to

look for 'depth of thought' before everything.

"'Kisotchka, you had better go home,' I said, or else your people

will be sure to miss you and will be looking for you all over the

town; and it would be awkward for you to go to your mother in the

morning.'

"Kisotchka agreed. At parting we arranged to meet at midday next

morning in the park, and the day after to set off together to

Pyatigorsk. I went into the street to see her home, and I remember

that I caressed her with genuine tenderness on the way. There was

a minute when I felt unbearably sorry for her, for trusting me so

implicitly, and I made up my mind that I would really take her to

Pyatigorsk, but remembering that I had only six hundred roubles in

my portmanteau, and that it would be far more difficult to break

it off with her in the autumn than now, I made haste to suppress

my compassion.

"We reached the house where Kisotchka's mother lived. I pulled at

the bell. When footsteps were heard at the other side of the door

Kisotchka suddenly looked grave, glanced upwards to the sky, made

the sign of the Cross over me several times and, clutching my hand,

pressed it to her lips.

"'Till to-morrow,' she said, and disappeared into the house.

"I crossed to the opposite pavement and from there looked at the

house. At first the windows were in darkness, then in one of the

windows there was the glimmer of the faint bluish flame of a newly

lighted candle; the flame grew, gave more light, and I saw shadows

moving about the rooms together with it.

"'They did not expect her,' I thought.

"Returning to my hotel room I undressed, drank off a glass of red

wine, ate some fresh caviare which I had bought that day in the

bazaar, went to bed in a leisurely way, and slept the sound,

untroubled sleep of a tourist.

"In the morning I woke up with a headache and in a bad humour.

Something worried me.

"'What's the matter?' I asked myself, trying to explain my uneasiness.

'What's upsetting me?'

"And I put down my uneasiness to the dread that Kisotchka might

turn up any minute and prevent my going away, and that I should

have to tell lies and act a part before her. I hurriedly dressed,

packed my things, and left the hotel, giving instructions to the

porter to take my luggage to the station for the seven o'clock train

in the evening. I spent the whole day with a doctor friend and left

the town that evening. As you see, my philosophy did not prevent

me from taking to my heels in a mean and treacherous flight. . . .

"All the while that I was at my friend's, and afterwards driving

to the station, I was tormented by anxiety. I fancied that I was

afraid of meeting with Kisotchka and a scene. In the station I

purposely remained in the toilet room till the second bell rang,

and while I was making my way to my compartment, I was oppressed

by a feeling as though I were covered all over with stolen things.

With what impatience and terror I waited for the third bell!

"At last the third bell that brought my deliverance rang at last,

the train moved; we passed the prison, the barracks, came out into

the open country, and yet, to my surprise, the feeling of uneasiness

still persisted, and still I felt like a thief passionately longing

to escape. It was queer. To distract my mind and calm myself I

looked out of the window. The train ran along the coast. The sea

was smooth, and the turquoise sky, almost half covered with the

tender, golden crimson light of sunset, was gaily and serenely

mirrored in it. Here and there fishing boats and rafts made black

patches on its surface. The town, as clean and beautiful as a toy,

stood on the high cliff, and was already shrouded in the mist of

evening. The golden domes of its churches, the windows and the

greenery reflected the setting sun, glowing and melting like

shimmering gold. . . . The scent of the fields mingled with the

soft damp air from the sea.

"The train flew rapidly along. I heard the laughter of passengers

and guards. Everyone was good-humoured and light-hearted, yet my

unaccountable uneasiness grew greater and greater. . . . I looked

at the white mist that covered the town and I imagined how a woman

with a senseless blank face was hurrying up and down in that mist

by the churches and the houses, looking for me and moaning, 'Oh,

my God! Oh, my God!' in the voice of a little girl or the cadences

of a Little Russian actress. I recalled her grave face and big

anxious eyes as she made the sign of the Cross over me, as though

I belonged to her, and mechanically I looked at the hand which she

had kissed the day before.

"'Surely I am not in love?' I asked myself, scratching my hand.

"Only as night came on when the passengers were asleep and I was

left _tête-à-tête_ with my conscience, I began to understand what

I had not been able to grasp before. In the twilight of the railway

carriage the image of Kisotchka rose before me, haunted me and I

recognised clearly that I had committed a crime as bad as murder.

My conscience tormented me. To stifle this unbearable feeling, I

assured myself that everything was nonsense and vanity, that Kisotchka

and I would die and decay, that her grief was nothing in comparison

with death, and so on and so on . . . and that if you come to that,

there is no such thing as freewill, and that therefore I was not

to blame. But all these arguments only irritated me and were

extraordinarily quickly crowded out by other thoughts. There was a

miserable feeling in the hand that Kisotchka had kissed. . . . I

kept lying down and getting up again, drank vodka at the stations,

forced myself to eat bread and butter, fell to assuring myself again

that life had no meaning, but nothing was of any use. A strange and

if you like absurd ferment was going on in my brain. The most

incongruous ideas crowded one after another in disorder, getting

more and more tangled, thwarting each other, and I, the thinker,

'with my brow bent on the earth,' could make out nothing and could

not find my bearings in this mass of essential and non-essential

ideas. It appeared that I, the thinker, had not mastered the technique

of thinking, and that I was no more capable of managing my own brain

than mending a watch. For the first time in my life I was really

thinking eagerly and intensely, and that seemed to me so monstrous

that I said to myself: 'I am going off my head.' A man whose brain

does not work at all times, but only at painful moments, is often

haunted by the thought of madness.

"I spent a day and a night in this misery, then a second night, and

learning from experience how little my philosophy was to me, I came

to my senses and realised at last what sort of a creature I was. I

saw that my ideas were not worth a brass farthing, and that before

meeting Kisotchka I had not begun to think and had not even a

conception of what thinking in earnest meant; now through suffering

I realised that I had neither convictions nor a definite moral

standard, nor heart, nor reason; my whole intellectual and moral

wealth consisted of specialist knowledge, fragments, useless memories,

other people's ideas--and nothing else; and my mental processes

were as lacking in complexity, as useless and as rudimentary as a

Yakut's. . . . If I had disliked lying, had not stolen, had not

murdered, and, in fact, made obviously gross mistakes, that was not

owing to my convictions--I had none, but because I was in bondage,

hand and foot, to my nurse's fairy tales and to copy-book morals,

which had entered into my flesh and blood and without my noticing

it guided me in life, though I looked on them as absurd. . . .

"I realised that I was not a thinker, not a philosopher, but simply

a dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain with

promise of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six,

undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed down

by any stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with information

of a sort in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiological

craving for exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all at

once quite casually the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of life

and the darkness beyond the tomb descends upon it. It greedily sucks

it in, puts its whole outlook at its disposal and begins playing

with it, like a cat with a mouse. There is neither learning nor

system in the brain, but that does not matter. It deals with the

great ideas with its own innate powers, like a self-educated man,

and before a month has passed the owner of the brain can turn a

potato into a hundred dainty dishes, and fancies himself a

philosopher . . . .

"Our generation has carried this dilettantism, this playing with

serious ideas into science, into literature, into politics, and

into everything which it is not too lazy to go into, and with its

dilettantism has introduced, too, its coldness, its boredom, and

its one-sidedness and, as it seems to me, it has already succeeded

in developing in the masses a new hitherto non-existent attitude

to serious ideas.

"I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance,

thanks to a misfortune. My normal thinking, so it seems to me now,

dates from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my

conscience sent me flying back to N., when with no philosophical

subleties I repented, besought Kisotchka's forgiveness like a naughty

boy and wept with her. . . ."

Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka.

"H'm. . . ." the student filtered through his teeth when the engineer

had finished. "That's the sort of thing that happens."

His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev's

story had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer after

a moment's pause, began expounding his view again and repeating

what he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up

from the table and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and began

undressing.

"You look as though you have really convinced some one this time,"

he said irritably.

"Me convince anybody!" said the engineer. "My dear soul, do you

suppose I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you is

impossible. You can reach conviction only by way of personal

experience and suffering!"

"And then--it's queer logic!" grumbled the student as he put on

his nightshirt. "The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinous

for the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old;

it's as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . . Where do the

old get this privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas are

poison, they are equally poisonous for all?"

"Oh, no, my dear soul, don't say so!" said the engineer with a sly

wink. "Don't say so. In the first place, old men are not dilettanti.

Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from

the depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively

studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made

no end of mistakes, in fact--when they have climbed the whole

ladder from bottom to top. Their pessimism has both personal

experience and sound philosophic training behind it. Secondly, the

pessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, as

it does with you and me, but of _Weltschmertz_, of suffering; it

rests in them on a Christian foundation because it is derived from

love for humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirely

free from the egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti. You despise

life because its meaning and its object are hidden just from you,

and you are only afraid of your own death, while the real thinker

is unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he is afraid

for all men. For instance, there is living not far from here the

Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a nice old man. At one

time he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; the

devil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably clever

fellow and in philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and he

is continually reading now. Well, we came across him lately in the

Gruzovsky district. . . . They were laying the sleepers and rails

just at the time. It's not a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch,

not being a specialist, looked at it as though it were a conjuring

trick. It takes an experienced workman less than a minute to lay a

sleeper and fix a rail on it. The workmen were in good form and

really were working smartly and rapidly; one rascal in particular

brought his hammer down with exceptional smartness on the head of

the nail and drove it in at one blow, though the handle of the

hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a foot

long. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved,

and said to me with tears in his eyes:

"'What a pity that these splendid men will die!' Such pessimism I

understand."

"All that proves nothing and explains nothing," said the student,

covering himself up with a sheet; "all that is simply pounding

liquid in a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can be proved

by words."

He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowning

irritably, said quickly:

"One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and to

ascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disprove

anything you like with words, and people will soon perfect the

technique of language to such a point that they will prove with

mathematical certainty that twice two is seven. I am fond of reading

and listening, but as to believing, no thank you; I can't, and I

don't want to. I believe only in God, but as for you, if you talk

to me till the Second Coming and seduce another five hundred

Kisothchkas, I shall believe in you only when I go out of my mind

. . . . Goodnight."

The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towards

the wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did not

want to speak or listen. The argument ended at that.

Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and I

saw the lights once more.

"We have tired you out with our chatter," said Ananyev, yawning and

looking at the sky. "Well, my good sir! The only pleasure we have

in this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . . What an

embankment, Lord have mercy on us!" he said admiringly, as we

approached the embankment; "it is more like Mount Ararat than an

embankment."

He paused for a little, then said: "Those lights remind the Baron

of the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts

of man. . . . You know the thoughts of each individual man are

scattered like that in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards

some goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding light

on anything, without lighting up the night, they vanish somewhere

far beyond old age. But enough philosophising! It's time to go

bye-bye."

When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take

his bed.

"Oh please!" he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart.

"I entreat you, and don't worry about me! I can sleep anywhere,

and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do--it's a

favour!"

I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table

and set to work on the plans.

"We fellows have no time for sleep," he said in a low voice when I

had got into bed and shut my eyes. "When a man has a wife and two

children he can't think of sleep. One must think now of food and

clothes and saving for the future. And I have two of them, a little

son and a daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little

face. He's not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities,

I assure you. . . . I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . .

Ah, my children, my children!"

He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began

looking at them. I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. Von

Schtenberg with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the

doorway dressed in his underclothes, talking loudly with some one

. . . . It was getting light. A gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping

in at the door, at the windows, and through the crevices in the hut

walls, and casting a faint light on my bed, on the table with the

papers, and on Ananyev. Stretched on the floor on a cloak, with a

leather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep with his

fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that I

pitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleep

in the same room with him every night.

"Why on earth are we to take them?" shouted Von Schtenberg. "It has

nothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the cauldrons

come?"

"From Nikitin . . ." a bass voice answered gruffly.

"Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That's not in our

department. What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!"

"Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already," said the bass

voice still more gruffly. "Yesterday we were the whole day looking

for him down the line, and were told at his hut that he had gone

to the Dymkovsky section. Please take them, your honour! How much

longer are we to go carting them about? We go carting them on and

on along the line, and see no end to it."

"What is it?" Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his head

quickly.

"They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin's," said the student,

"and he is begging us to take them. And what business is it of ours

to take them?"

"Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right! The horses have

been two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry.

Are we to take them back, or what? The railway ordered the cauldrons,

so it ought to take them. . . ."

"Can't you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to do

with us? Go on to Tchalisov!"

"What is it? Who's there?" Ananyev asked huskily again. "Damnation

take them all," he said, getting up and going to the door. "What

is it?"

I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut. Ananyev and

the student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrily

and impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing before

them bare-headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently not

understanding them. Both faces looked preoccupied with workaday

cares.

"What use are your cauldrons to me," shouted Ananyev. "Am I to put

them on my head, or what? If you can't find Tchalisov, find his

assistant, and leave us in peace!"

Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of the

previous night. The workaday expression vanished from his sleepy

face and a look of mental inertia came into it. He waved the peasant

off and walked away absorbed in thought.

It was a cloudy morning. On the line where the lights had been

gleaming the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep,

were swarming. There was a sound of voices and the squeaking of

wheelbarrows. The working day was beginning. One poor little nag

harnessed with cord was already plodding towards the embankment,

tugging with its neck, and dragging along a cartful of sand.

I began saying good-bye. . . . A great deal had been said in the

night, but I carried away with me no answer to any question, and

in the morning, of the whole conversation there remained in my

memory, as in a filter, only the lights and the image of Kisotchka.

As I got on the horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for the

last time, at the hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-looking

eyes, at the workmen flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at the

embankment, at the little nag straining with its neck, and thought:

"There is no making out anything in this world."

And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a

little later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain

and the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were

discussed in the night. I pondered while the sun-scorched plain,

the immense sky, the oak forest, dark on the horizon and the hazy

distance, seemed saying to me:

"Yes, there's no understanding anything in this world!"

The sun began to rise. . . .