Since it would be useless to fight against my present mood, and I have
no power to do it, I made up my mind that the last days of my life
shall be irreproachable, on the formal side. If I am not right with
my family, which I certainly admit, I will try at least to do as it
wishes. Besides I am lately become so indifferent that it’s positively
all the same, to me whether I go to Kharkov, or Paris, or Berditshev.
I arrived here at noon and put up at a hotel not far from the
cathedral. The train made me giddy, the draughts blew through me, and
now I am sitting on the bed with my head in my hands waiting for the
tic. I ought to go to my professor friends to-day, but I have neither
the will nor the strength.
The old hall-porter comes in to ask whether I have brought my own
bed-clothes. I keep him about five minutes asking him questions about
Gnekker, on whose account I came here. The porter happens to be
Kharkov-born, and knows the town inside out; but he doesn’t remember
any family with the name of Gnekker. I inquire about the estate. The
answer is the same.
The clock in the passage strikes one,... two,... three.... The last
months of my life, while I wait for death, seem to me far longer than
my whole life. Never before could I reconcile myself to the slowness
of time as I can now. Before, when I had to wait for a train at the
station, or to sit at an examination, a quarter of an hour would seem
an eternity. Now I can sit motionless in bed the whole night long,
quite calmly thinking that there will be the same long, colourless
night to-morrow, and the next day....
In the passage the clock strikes five, six, seven.... It grows dark.
There is dull pain in my cheek--the beginning of the tic. To occupy
myself with thoughts, I return to my old point of view, when I was not
indifferent, and ask: Why do I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sit
in this little room, on this bed with a strange grey blanket? Why do
I look at this cheap tin washstand and listen to the wretched clock
jarring in the passage? Is all this worthy of my fame and my high
position among people? And I answer these questions with a smile. My
_naïveté_ seems funny to me--the _naïveté_ with which as a young man
I exaggerated the value of fame and of the exclusive position which
famous men enjoy. I am famous, my name is spoken with reverence. My
portrait has appeared in “Niva” and in “The Universal Illustration.”
I’ve even read my biography in a German paper, but what of that? I sit
lonely, by myself, in a strange city, on a strange bed, rubbing my
aching cheek with my palm....
Family scandals, the hardness of creditors, the rudeness of railway
men, the discomforts of the passport system, the expensive and
unwholesome food at the buffets, the general coarseness and roughness
of people,--all this and a great deal more that would take too long
to put down, concerns me as much as it concerns any bourgeois who is
known only in his own little street. Where is the exclusiveness of my
position then? We will admit that I am infinitely famous, that I am a
hero of whom my country is proud. All the newspapers give bulletins
of my illness, the post is already bringing in sympathetic addresses
from my friends, my pupils, and the public. But all this will not save
me from dying in anguish on a stranger’s bed in utter loneliness. Of
course there is no one to blame for this. But I must confess I do not
like my popularity. I feel that it has deceived me.
At about ten I fall asleep, and, in spite of the tic sleep soundly, and
would sleep for a long while were I not awakened. Just after one there
is a sudden knock on my door.
“Who’s there?”
“A telegram.”
“You could have brought it to-morrow,” I storm, as I take the telegram
from the porter. “Now I shan’t sleep again.”
“I’m sorry. There was a light in your room. I thought you were not
asleep.”
I open the telegram and look first at the signature--my wife’s. What
does she want?
“Gnekker married Liza secretly yesterday. Return.”
I read the telegram. For a long while I am not startled. Not Gnekker’s
or Liza’s action frightens me, but the indifference with which I
receive the news of their marriage. Men say that philosophers and true
_savants_ are indifferent. It is untrue. Indifference is the paralysis
of the soul, premature death.
I go to bed again and begin to ponder with what thoughts I can occupy
myself. What on earth shall I think of? I seem to have thought over
everything, and now there is nothing powerful enough to rouse my
thought.
When the day begins to dawn, I sit in bed clasping my knees and, for
want of occupation I try to know myself. “Know yourself” is good,
useful advice; but it is a pity that the ancients did not think of
showing us the way to avail ourselves of it.
Before, when I had the desire to understand somebody else, or myself,
I used not to take into consideration actions, wherein everything is
conditional, but desires. Tell me what you want, and I will tell you
what you are.
And now I examine myself. What do I want?
I want our wives, children, friends, and pupils to love in us, not the
name or the firm or the label, but the ordinary human beings. What
besides? I should like to have assistants and successors. What more? I
should like to wake in a hundred years’ time, and take a look, if only
with one eye, at what has happened to science. I should like to live
ten years more.... What further?
Nothing further. I think, think a long while and cannot make out
anything else. However much I were to think, wherever my thoughts
should stray, it is clear to me that the chief, all-important something
is lacking in my desires. In my infatuation for science, my desire to
live, my sitting here on a strange bed, my yearning to know myself, in
all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas I form about anything, there is
wanting the something universal which could bind all these together in
one whole. Each feeling and thought lives detached in me, and in all
my opinions about science, the theatre, literature, and my pupils, and
in all the little pictures which my imagination paints, not even the
most cunning analyst will discover what is called the general idea, or
the god of the living man.
And if this is not there, then nothing is there.
In poverty such as this a serious infirmity, fear of death, influence
of circumstances and people would have been enough to overthrow and
shatter all that I formerly considered as my conception of the world,
and all wherein I saw the meaning and joy of my life. Therefore, it
is nothing strange that I have darkened the last months of my life by
thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave or a savage, and that I am now
indifferent and do not notice the dawn. If there is lacking in a man
that which is higher and stronger than all outside influences, then
verily a good cold in the head is enough to upset his balance and to
make him see each bird an owl and hear a dog’s whine in every sound;
and all his pessimism or his optimism with their attendant thoughts,
great and small, seem then to be merely symptoms and no more.
I am beaten. Then it’s no good going on thinking, no good talking. I
shall sit and wait in silence for what will come.
In the morning the porter brings me tea and the local paper.
Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first page, the leader,
the extracts from newspapers and magazines, the local news ... Among
other things I find in the local news an item like this: “Our famous
scholar, emeritus professor Nicolai Stiepanovich arrived in Kharkov
yesterday by the express, and stayed at----hotel.”
Evidently big names are created to live detached from those who bear
them. Now my name walks in Kharkov undisturbed. In some three months it
will shine as bright as the sun itself, inscribed in letters of gold on
my tombstone--at a time when I myself will be under the sod....
A faint knock at the door. Somebody wants me.
“Who’s there? Come in!”
The door opens. I step back in astonishment, and hasten to pull my
dressing gown together. Before me stands Katy.
“How do you do?” she says, panting from running up the stairs. “You
didn’t expect me? I ... I’ve come too.”
She sits down and continues, stammering and looking away from me. “Why
don’t you say ‘Good morning’? I arrived too ... to-day. I found out you
were at this hotel, and came to see you.”
“I’m delighted to see you,” I say shrugging my shoulders. “But I’m
surprised. You might have dropped straight from heaven. What are you
doing here?”
“I?... I just came.”
Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and comes over to me.
“Nicolai Stiepanich!” she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to
her breast. “Nicolai Stiepanich! I can’t go on like this any longer. I
can’t. For God’s sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell
me, what shall I do?”
“What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing.”
“But tell me, I implore you,” she continues, out of breath and
trembling all over her body. “I swear to you, I can’t go on like this
any longer. I haven’t the strength.”
She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back,
wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and
dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.
“Help me, help,” she implores. “I can’t bear it any more.”
She takes a handkerchief out of her little travelling bag and with
it pulls out some letters which fall from her knees to the floor.
I pick them up from the floor and recognise on one of them Mikhail
Fiodorovich’s hand-writing, and accidentally read part of a word:
“passionat....”
“There’s nothing that I can say to you, Katy,” I say.
“Help me,” she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. “You’re my father,
my only friend. You’re wise and learned, and you’ve lived long! You
were a teacher. Tell me what to do.”
I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly
stand upright.
“Let’s have some breakfast, Katy,” I say with a constrained smile.
Instantly I add in a sinking voice:
“I shall be dead soon, Katy....”
“Only one word, only one word,” she weeps and stretches out her hands
to me. “What shall I do?”
“You’re a queer thing, really ...”, I murmur. “I can’t understand it.
Such a clever woman and suddenly--weeping....”
Comes silence. Katy arranges her hair, puts on her hat, then crumples
her letters and stuffs them in her little bag, all in silence and
unhurried. Her face, her bosom and her gloves are wet with tears, but
her expression is dry already, stern.... I look at her and am ashamed
that I am happier than she. It was but a little while before my death,
in the ebb of my life, that I noticed in myself the absence of what our
friends the philosophers call the general idea; but this poor thing’s
soul has never known and never will know shelter all her life, all her
life.
“Katy, let’s have breakfast,” I say.
“No, thank you,” she answers coldly.
One minute more passes in silence.
“I don’t like Kharkov,” I say. “It’s too grey. A grey city.”
“Yes ... ugly.... I’m not here for long.... On my way. I leave to-day.”
“For where?”
“For the Crimea ... I mean, the Caucasus.”
“So. For long?”
“I don’t know.”
Katy gets up and gives me her hand with a cold smile, looking away from
me.
I would like to ask her: “That means you won’t be at my funeral?” But
she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger’s. I
escort her to the door in silence.... She goes out of my room and walks
down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are
following her, and probably on the landing she will look back.
No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time,
her steps were stilled.... Goodbye, my treasure!