and your assistant Nikita have nothing to do with the future, but you
may be sure, sir, better days will come! I may express myself cheaply,
you may laugh, but the dawn of a new life is at hand; truth and justice
will triumph, and--our turn will come! I shall not live to see it, I
shall perish, but some people's great-grandsons will see it. I greet
them with all my heart and rejoice, rejoice with them! Onward! God be
your help, friends!"
With shining eyes Ivan Dmitritch got up, and stretching his hands
towards the window, went on with emotion in his voice:
"From behind these bars I bless you! Hurrah for truth and justice! I
rejoice!"
"I see no particular reason to rejoice," said Andrey Yefimitch, who
thought Ivan Dmitritch's movement theatrical, though he was delighted by
it. "Prisons and madhouses there will not be, and truth, as you have
just expressed it, will triumph; but the reality of things, you know,
will not change, the laws of nature will still remain the same. People
will suffer pain, grow old, and die just as they do now. However
magnificent a dawn lighted up your life, you would yet in the end be
nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole."
"And immortality?"
"Oh, come, now!"
"You don't believe in it, but I do. Somebody in Dostoevsky or Voltaire
said that if there had not been a God men would have invented him. And I
firmly believe that if there is no immortality the great intellect of
man will sooner or later invent it."
"Well said," observed Andrey Yefimitch, smiling with pleasure; "its a
good thing you have faith. With such a belief one may live happily even
shut up within walls. You have studied somewhere, I presume?"
"Yes, I have been at the university, but did not complete my studies."
"You are a reflecting and a thoughtful man. In any surroundings you can
find tranquillity in yourself. Free and deep thinking which strives for
the comprehension of life, and complete contempt for the foolish bustle
of the world--those are two blessings beyond any that man has ever known.
And you can possess them even though you lived behind threefold bars.
Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of the
earth."
"Your Diogenes was a blockhead," said Ivan Dmitritch morosely. "Why do
you talk to me about Diogenes and some foolish comprehension of life?"
he cried, growing suddenly angry and leaping up. "I love life; I love it
passionately. I have the mania of persecution, a continual agonizing
terror; but I have moments when I am overwhelmed by the thirst for life,
and then I am afraid of going mad. I want dreadfully to live,
dreadfully!"
He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and said, dropping his
voice:
"When I dream I am haunted by phantoms. People come to me, I hear voices
and music, and I fancy I am walking through woods or by the seashore,
and I long so passionately for movement, for interests . . . . Come,
tell me, what news is there?" asked Ivan Dmitritch; "what's happening?"
"Do you wish to know about the town or in general?"
"Well, tell me first about the town, and then in general."
"Well, in the town it is appallingly dull. . . . There's no one to say a
word to, no one to listen to. There are no new people. A young doctor
called Hobotov has come here recently."
"He had come in my time. Well, he is a low cad, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is a man of no culture. It's strange, you know. . . . Judging
by every sign, there is no intellectual stagnation in our capital
cities; there is a movement--so there must be real people there too; but
for some reason they always send us such men as I would rather not see.
It's an unlucky town!"
"Yes, it is an unlucky town," sighed Ivan Dmitritch, and he laughed.
"And how are things in general? What are they writing in the papers and
reviews?"
It was by now dark in the ward. The doctor got up, and, standing, began
to describe what was being written abroad and in Russia, and the
tendency of thought that could be noticed now. Ivan Dmitritch listened
attentively and put questions, but suddenly, as though recalling
something terrible, clutched at his head and lay down on the bed with
his back to the doctor.
"What's the matter?" asked Andrey Yefimitch.
"You will not hear another word from me," said Ivan Dmitritch rudely.
"Leave me alone."
"Why so?"
"I tell you, leave me alone. Why the devil do you persist?"
Andrey Yefimitch shrugged his shoulders, heaved a sigh, and went out. As
he crossed the entry he said: "You might clear up here, Nikita . . .
there's an awfully stuffy smell."
"Certainly, your honour."
"What an agreeable young man!" thought Andrey Yefimitch, going back to
his flat. "In all the years I have been living here I do believe he is
the first I have met with whom one can talk. He is capable of reasoning
and is interested in just the right things."
While he was reading, and afterwards, while he was going to bed, he kept
thinking about Ivan Dmitritch, and when he woke next morning he
remembered that he had the day before made the acquaintance of an
intelligent and interesting man, and determined to visit him again as
soon as possible. X
Ivan Dmitritch was lying in the same position as on the previous day,
with his head clutched in both hands and his legs drawn up. His face was
not visible.
"Good-day, my friend," said Andrey Yefimitch. "You are not asleep, are
you?"
"In the first place, I am not your friend," Ivan Dmitritch articulated
into the pillow; "and in the second, your efforts are useless; you will
not get one word out of me."
"Strange," muttered Andrey Yefimitch in confusion. "Yesterday we talked
peacefully, but suddenly for some reason you took offence and broke off
all at once. . . . Probably I expressed myself awkwardly, or perhaps
gave utterance to some idea which did not fit in with your convictions.
. . ."
"Yes, a likely idea!" said Ivan Dmitritch, sitting up and looking at the
doctor with irony and uneasiness. His eyes were red. "You can go and spy
and probe somewhere else, it's no use your doing it here. I knew
yesterday what you had come for."
"A strange fancy," laughed the doctor. "So you suppose me to be a spy?"
"Yes, I do. . . . A spy or a doctor who has been charged to test me--it's
all the same ----"
"Oh excuse me, what a queer fellow you are really!"
The doctor sat down on the stool near the bed and shook his head
reproachfully.
"But let us suppose you are right," he said, "let us suppose that I am
treacherously trying to trap you into saying something so as to betray
you to the police. You would be arrested and then tried. But would you
be any worse off being tried and in prison than you are here? If you are
banished to a settlement, or even sent to penal servitude, would it be
worse than being shut up in this ward? I imagine it would be no worse. .
. . What, then, are you afraid of?"
These words evidently had an effect on Ivan Dmitritch. He sat down
quietly.
It was between four and five in the afternoon--the time when Andrey
Yefimitch usually walked up and down his rooms, and Daryushka asked
whether it was not time for his beer. It was a still, bright day.
"I came out for a walk after dinner, and here I have come, as you see,"
said the doctor. "It is quite spring."
"What month is it? March?" asked Ivan Dmitritch.
"Yes, the end of March."
"Is it very muddy?"
"No, not very. There are already paths in the garden."
"It would be nice now to drive in an open carriage somewhere into the
country," said Ivan Dmitritch, rubbing his red eyes as though he were
just awake, "then to come home to a warm, snug study, and . . . and to
have a decent doctor to cure one's headache. . . . It's so long since I
have lived like a human being. It's disgusting here! Insufferably
disgusting!"
After his excitement of the previous day he was exhausted and listless,
and spoke unwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his face it could
be seen that he had a splitting headache.
"There is no real difference between a warm, snug study and this ward,"
said Andrey Yefimitch. "A man's peace and contentment do not lie outside
a man, but in himself."
"What do you mean?"
"The ordinary man looks for good and evil in external things--that is, in
carriages, in studies--but a thinking man looks for it in himself."
"You should go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it's warm and
fragrant with the scent of pomegranates, but here it is not suited to
the climate. With whom was it I was talking of Diogenes? Was it with
you?"
"Yes, with me yesterday."
"Diogenes did not need a study or a warm habitation; it's hot there
without. You can lie in your tub and eat oranges and olives. But bring
him to Russia to live: he'd be begging to be let indoors in May, let
alone December. He'd be doubled up with the cold."
"No. One can be insensible to cold as to every other pain. Marcus
Aurelius says: 'A pain is a vivid idea of pain; make an effort of will
to change that idea, dismiss it, cease to complain, and the pain will
disappear.' That is true. The wise man, or simply the reflecting,
thoughtful man, is distinguished precisely by his contempt for
suffering; he is always contented and surprised at nothing."
"Then I am an idiot, since I suffer and am discontented and surprised at
the baseness of mankind."
"You are wrong in that; if you will reflect more on the subject you will
understand how insignificant is all that external world that agitates
us. One must strive for the comprehension of life, and in that is true
happiness."
"Comprehension . . ." repeated Ivan Dmitritch frowning. "External,
internal. . . . Excuse me, but I don't understand it. I only know," he
said, getting up and looking angrily at the doctor--"I only know that God
has created me of warm blood and nerves, yes, indeed! If organic tissue
is capable of life it must react to every stimulus. And I do! To pain I
respond with tears and outcries, to baseness with indignation, to filth
with loathing. To my mind, that is just what is called life. The lower
the organism, the less sensitive it is, and the more feebly it reacts to
stimulus; and the higher it is, the more responsively and vigorously it
reacts to reality. How is it you don't know that? A doctor, and not know
such trifles! To despise suffering, to be always contented, and to be
surprised at nothing, one must reach this condition"--and Ivan Dmitritch
pointed to the peasant who was a mass of fat--"or to harden oneself by
suffering to such a point that one loses all sensibility to it--that is,
in other words, to cease to live. You must excuse me, I am not a sage or
a philosopher," Ivan Dmitritch continued with irritation, "and I don't
understand anything about it. I am not capable of reasoning."
"On the contrary, your reasoning is excellent."
"The Stoics, whom you are parodying, were remarkable people, but their
doctrine crystallized two thousand years ago and has not advanced, and
will not advance, an inch forward, since it is not practical or living.
It had a success only with the minority which spends its life in
savouring all sorts of theories and ruminating over them; the majority
did not understand it. A doctrine which advocates indifference to wealth
and to the comforts of life, and a contempt for suffering and death, is
quite unintelligible to the vast majority of men, since that majority
has never known wealth or the comforts of life; and to despise suffering
would mean to it despising life itself, since the whole existence of man
is made up of the sensations of hunger, cold, injury, and a Hamlet-like
dread of death. The whole of life lies in these sensations; one may be
oppressed by it, one may hate it, but one cannot despise it. Yes, so, I
repeat, the doctrine of the Stoics can never have a future; from the
beginning of time up to to-day you see continually increasing the
struggle, the sensibility to pain, the capacity of responding to
stimulus."
Ivan Dmitritch suddenly lost the thread of his thoughts, stopped, and
rubbed his forehead with vexation.
"I meant to say something important, but I have lost it," he said. "What
was I saying? Oh, yes! This is what I mean: one of the Stoics sold
himself into slavery to redeem his neighbour, so, you see, even a Stoic
did react to stimulus, since, for such a generous act as the destruction
of oneself for the sake of one's neighbour, he must have had a soul
capable of pity and indignation. Here in prison I have forgotten
everything I have learned, or else I could have recalled something else.
Take Christ, for instance: Christ responded to reality by weeping,
smiling, being sorrowful and moved to wrath, even overcome by misery. He
did not go to meet His sufferings with a smile, He did not despise
death, but prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that this cup might pass
Him by."
Ivan Dmitritch laughed and sat down.
"Granted that a man's peace and contentment lie not outside but in
himself," he said, "granted that one must despise suffering and not be
surprised at anything, yet on what ground do you preach the theory? Are
you a sage? A philosopher?"
"No, I am not a philosopher, but everyone ought to preach it because it
is reasonable."
"No, I want to know how it is that you consider yourself competent to
judge of 'comprehension,' contempt for suffering, and so on. Have you
ever suffered? Have you any idea of suffering? Allow me to ask you, were
you ever thrashed in your childhood?"
"No, my parents had an aversion for corporal punishment."
"My father used to flog me cruelly; my father was a harsh, sickly
Government clerk with a long nose and a yellow neck. But let us talk of
you. No one has laid a finger on you all your life, no one has scared
you nor beaten you; you are as strong as a bull. You grew up under your
father's wing and studied at his expense, and then you dropped at once
into a sinecure. For more than twenty years you have lived rent free
with heating, lighting, and service all provided, and had the right to
work how you pleased and as much as you pleased, even to do nothing. You
were naturally a flabby, lazy man, and so you have tried to arrange your
life so that nothing should disturb you or make you move. You have
handed over your work to the assistant and the rest of the rabble while
you sit in peace and warmth, save money, read, amuse yourself with
reflections, with all sorts of lofty nonsense, and" (Ivan Dmitritch
looked at the doctor's red nose) "with boozing; in fact, you have seen
nothing of life, you know absolutely nothing of it, and are only
theoretically acquainted with reality; you despise suffering and are
surprised at nothing for a very simple reason: vanity of vanities, the
external and the internal, contempt for life, for suffering and for
death, comprehension, true happiness--that's the philosophy that suits
the Russian sluggard best. You see a peasant beating his wife, for
instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they will both die sooner or
later, anyway; and, besides, he who beats injures by his blows, not the
person he is beating, but himself. To get drunk is stupid and unseemly,
but if you drink you die, and if you don't drink you die. A peasant
woman comes with toothache . . . well, what of it? Pain is the idea of
pain, and besides 'there is no living in this world without illness; we
shall all die, and so, go away, woman, don't hinder me from thinking and
drinking vodka.' A young man asks advice, what he is to do, how he is to
live; anyone else would think before answering, but you have got the
answer ready: strive for 'comprehension' or for true happiness. And what
is that fantastic 'true happiness'? There's no answer, of course. We are
kept here behind barred windows, tortured, left to rot; but that is very
good and reasonable, because there is no difference at all between this
ward and a warm, snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do
nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise . . . .
No, sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not breadth of
vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction. Yes," cried Ivan
Dmitritch, getting angry again, "you despise suffering, but I'll be
bound if you pinch your finger in the door you will howl at the top of
your voice."
"And perhaps I shouldn't howl," said Andrey Yefimitch, with a gentle
smile.
"Oh, I dare say! Well, if you had a stroke of paralysis, or supposing
some fool or bully took advantage of his position and rank to insult you
in public, and if you knew he could do it with impunity, then you would
understand what it means to put people off with comprehension and true
happiness."
"That's original," said Andrey Yefimitch, laughing with pleasure and
rubbing his hands. "I am agreeably struck by your inclination for
drawing generalizations, and the sketch of my character you have just
drawn is simply brilliant. I must confess that talking to you gives me
great pleasure. Well, I've listened to you, and now you must graciously
listen to me." XI
The conversation went on for about an hour longer, and apparently made a
deep impression on Andrey Yefimitch. He began going to the ward every
day. He went there in the mornings and after dinner, and often the dusk
of evening found him in conversation with Ivan Dmitritch. At first Ivan
Dmitritch held aloof from him, suspected him of evil designs, and openly
expressed his hostility. But afterwards he got used to him, and his
abrupt manner changed to one of condescending irony.
Soon it was all over the hospital that the doctor, Andrey Yefimitch, had
taken to visiting Ward No. 6. No one--neither Sergey Sergevitch, nor
Nikita, nor the nurses--could conceive why he went there, why he stayed
there for hours together, what he was talking about, and why he did not
write prescriptions. His actions seemed strange. Often Mihail
Averyanitch did not find him at home, which had never happened in the
past, and Daryushka was greatly perturbed, for the doctor drank his beer
now at no definite time, and sometimes was even late for dinner.
One day--it was at the end of June--Dr. Hobotov went to see Andrey
Yefimitch about something. Not finding him at home, he proceeded to look
for him in the yard; there he was told that the old doctor had gone to
see the mental patients. Going into the lodge and stopping in the entry,
Hobotov heard the following conversation:
"We shall never agree, and you will not succeed in converting me to your
faith," Ivan Dmitritch was saying irritably; "you are utterly ignorant
of reality, and you have never known suffering, but have only like a
leech fed beside the sufferings of others, while I have been in
continual suffering from the day of my birth till to-day. For that
reason, I tell you frankly, I consider myself superior to you and more
competent in every respect. It's not for you to teach me."
"I have absolutely no ambition to convert you to my faith," said Andrey
Yefimitch gently, and with regret that the other refused to understand
him. "And that is not what matters, my friend; what matters is not that
you have suffered and I have not. Joy and suffering are passing; let us
leave them, never mind them. What matters is that you and I think; we
see in each other people who are capable of thinking and reasoning, and
that is a common bond between us however different our views. If you
knew, my friend, how sick I am of the universal senselessness,
ineptitude, stupidity, and with what delight I always talk with you! You
are an intelligent man, and I enjoyed your company."
Hobotov opened the door an inch and glanced into the ward; Ivan
Dmitritch in his night-cap and the doctor Andrey Yefimitch were sitting
side by side on the bed. The madman was grimacing, twitching, and
convulsively wrapping himself in his gown, while the doctor sat
motionless with bowed head, and his face was red and look helpless and
sorrowful. Hobotov shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and glanced at
Nikita. Nikita shrugged his shoulders too.
Next day Hobotov went to the lodge, accompanied by the assistant. Both
stood in the entry and listened.
"I fancy our old man has gone clean off his chump!" said Hobotov as he
came out of the lodge.
"Lord have mercy upon us sinners!" sighed the decorous Sergey
Sergeyitch, scrupulously avoiding the puddles that he might not muddy
his polished boots. "I must own, honoured Yevgeny Fyodoritch, I have
been expecting it for a long time." XII
After this Andrey Yefimitch began to notice a mysterious air in all
around him. The attendants, the nurses, and the patients looked at him
inquisitively when they met him, and then whispered together. The
superintendent's little daughter Masha, whom he liked to meet in the
hospital garden, for some reason ran away from him now when he went up
with a smile to stroke her on the head. The postmaster no longer said,
"Perfectly true," as he listened to him, but in unaccountable confusion
muttered, "Yes, yes, yes . . ." and looked at him with a grieved and
thoughtful expression; for some reason he took to advising his friend to
give up vodka and beer, but as a man of delicate feeling he did not say
this directly, but hinted it, telling him first about the commanding
officer of his battalion, an excellent man, and then about the priest of
the regiment, a capital fellow, both of whom drank and fell ill, but on
giving up drinking completely regained their health. On two or three
occasions Andrey Yefimitch was visited by his colleague Hobotov, who
also advised him to give up spirituous liquors, and for no apparent
reason recommended him to take bromide.
In August Andrey Yefimitch got a letter from the mayor of the town
asking him to come on very important business. On arriving at the town
hall at the time fixed, Andrey Yefimitch found there the military
commander, the superintendent of the district school, a member of the
town council, Hobotov, and a plump, fair gentleman who was introduced to
him as a doctor. This doctor, with a Polish surname difficult to
pronounce, lived at a pedigree stud-farm twenty miles away, and was now
on a visit to the town.
"There's something that concerns you," said the member of the town
council, addressing Andrey Yefimitch after they had all greeted one
another and sat down to the table. "Here Yevgeny Fyodoritch says that
there is not room for the dispensary in the main building, and that it
ought to be transferred to one of the lodges. That's of no
consequence--of course it can be transferred, but the point is that the
lodge wants doing up."
"Yes, it would have to be done up," said Andrey Yefimitch after a
moment's thought. "If the corner lodge, for instance, were fitted up as
a dispensary, I imagine it would cost at least five hundred roubles. An
unproductive expenditure!"
Everyone was silent for a space.
"I had the honour of submitting to you ten years ago," Andrey Yefimitch
went on in a low voice, "that the hospital in its present form is a
luxury for the town beyond its means. It was built in the forties, but
things were different then. The town spends too much on unnecessary
buildings and superfluous staff. I believe with a different system two
model hospitals might be maintained for the same money."
"Well, let us have a different system, then!" the member of the town
council said briskly.
"I have already had the honour of submitting to you that the medical
department should be transferred to the supervision of the Zemstvo."
"Yes, transfer the money to the Zemstvo and they will steal it," laughed
the fair-haired doctor.
"That's what it always comes to," the member of the council assented,
and he also laughed.
Andrey Yefimitch looked with apathetic, lustreless eyes at the fair-
haired doctor and said: "One should be just."
Again there was silence. Tea was brought in. The military commander, for
some reason much embarrassed, touched Andrey Yefimitch's hand across the
table and said: "You have quite forgotten us, doctor. But of course you
are a hermit: you don't play cards and don't like women. You would be
dull with fellows like us."
They all began saying how boring it was for a decent person to live in
such a town. No theatre, no music, and at the last dance at the club
there had been about twenty ladies and only two gentlemen. The young men
did not dance, but spent all the time crowding round the refreshment bar
or playing cards.