staying here? Why aren't you revolted? Why aren't you indignant? I
suppose you believe in God and know that it is a sin, that people go to
hell for it? Why don't you speak? It is true that they are strangers to
you, but you know even they have fathers, brothers like yourselves...."
One of Vassilyev's friends had once said of him that he was a talented
man. There are all sorts of talents--talent for writing, talent for the
stage, talent for art; but he had a peculiar talent--a talent for
humanity. He possessed an extraordinarily fine delicate scent for pain
in general. As a good actor reflects in himself the movements and voice
of others, so Vassilyev could reflect in his soul the sufferings of
others. When he saw tears, he wept; beside a sick man, he felt sick
himself and moaned; if he saw an act of violence, he felt as though he
himself were the victim of it, he was frightened as a child, and in his
fright ran to help. The pain of others worked on his nerves, excited
him, roused him to a state of frenzy, and so on.
Whether this friend were right I don't know, but what Vassilyev
experienced when he thought this question was settled was something like
inspiration. He cried and laughed, spoke aloud the words that he should
say next day, felt a fervent love for those who would listen to him and
would stand beside him at the corner of the street to preach; he sat
down to write letters, made vows to himself....
All this was like inspiration also from the fact that it did not last
long. Vassilyev was soon tired. The cases in London, in Hamburg, in
Warsaw, weighed upon him by their mass as a mountain weighs upon the
earth; he felt dispirited, bewildered, in the face of this mass; he
remembered that he had not a gift for words, that he was cowardly and
timid, that indifferent people would not be willing to listen and
understand him, a law student in his third year, a timid and
insignificant person; that genuine missionary work included not only
teaching but deeds...
When it was daylight and carriages were already beginning to rumble in
the street, Vassilyev was lying motionless on the sofa, staring into
space. He was no longer thinking of the women, nor of the men, nor of
missionary work. His whole attention was turned upon the spiritual agony
which was torturing him. It was a dull, vague, undefined anguish akin to
misery, to an extreme form of terror and to despair. He could point to
the place where the pain was, in his breast under his heart; but he
could not compare it with anything. In the past he had had acute
toothache, he had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was
insignificant compared with this spiritual anguish. In the presence of
that pain life seemed loathsome. The dissertation, the excellent work he
had written already, the people he loved, the salvation of fallen
women--everything that only the day before he had cared about or been
indifferent to, now when he thought of them irritated him in the same
way as the noise of the carriages, the scurrying footsteps of the
waiters in the passage, the daylight.... If at that moment someone had
performed a great deed of mercy or had committed a revolting outrage, he
would have felt the same repulsion for both actions. Of all the thoughts
that strayed through his mind only two did not irritate him: one was
that at every moment he had the power to kill himself, the other that
this agony would not last more than three days. This last he knew by
experience.
After lying for a while he got up and, wringing his hands, walked about
the room, not as usual from corner to corner, but round the room beside
the walls. As he passed he glanced at himself in the looking-glass. His
face looked pale and sunken, his temples looked hollow, his eyes were
bigger, darker, more staring, as though they belonged to someone else,
and they had an expression of insufferable mental agony.
At midday the artist knocked at the door.
"Grigory, are you at home?" he asked.
Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered himself
in Little Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone to the
University."
And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting his head
under the pillow, began crying with agony, and the more freely his tears
flowed the more terrible his mental anguish became. As it began to get
dark, he thought of the agonizing night awaiting him, and was overcome
by a horrible despair. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, and,
leaving his door wide open, for no object or reason, went out into the
street. Without asking himself where he should go, he walked quickly
along Sadovoy Street.
Snow was falling as heavily as the day before; it was thawing. Thrusting
his hands into his sleeves, shuddering and frightened at the noises, at
the trambells, and at the passers-by, Vassilyev walked along Sadovoy
Street as far as Suharev Tower; then to the Red Gate; from there he
turned off to Basmannya Street. He went into a tavern and drank off a
big glass of vodka, but that did not make him feel better. When he
reached Razgulya he turned to the right, and strode along side streets
in which he had never been before in his life. He reached the old bridge
by which the Yauza runs gurgling, and from which one can see long rows
of lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To distract his spiritual
anguish by some new sensation or some other pain, Vassilyev, not knowing
what to do, crying and shuddering, undid his greatcoat and jacket and
exposed his bare chest to the wet snow and the wind. But that did not
lessen his suffering either. Then he bent down over the rail of the
bridge and looked down into the black, yeasty Yauza, and he longed to
plunge down head foremost; not from loathing for life, not for the sake
of suicide, but in order to bruise himself at least, and by one pain to
ease the other. But the black water, the darkness, the deserted banks
covered with snow were terrifying. He shivered and walked on. He walked
up and down by the Red Barracks, then turned back and went down to a
copse, from the copse back to the bridge again.
"No, home, home!" he thought. "At home I believe it's better..."
And he went back. When he reached home he pulled off his wet coat and
cap, began pacing round the room, and went on pacing round and round
without stopping till morning.
VII
When next morning the artist and the medical student went in to him, he
was moving about the room with his shirt torn, biting his hands and
moaning with pain.
"For God's sake!" he sobbed when he saw his friends, "take me where you
please, do what you can; but for God's sake, save me quickly! I shall
kill myself!"
The artist turned pale and was helpless. The medical student, too,
almost shed tears, but considering that doctors ought to be cool and
composed in every emergency said coldly:
"It's a nervous breakdown. But it's nothing. Let us go at once to the
doctor."
"Wherever you like, only for God's sake, make haste!"
"Don't excite yourself. You must try and control yourself."
The artist and the medical student with trembling hands put Vassilyev's
coat and hat on and led him out into the street.
"Mihail Sergeyitch has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long
time," the medical student said on the way. "He is a very nice man and
thoroughly good at his work. He took his degree in 1882, and he has an
immense practice already. He treats students as though he were one
himself."
"Make haste, make haste!..." Vassilyev urged.
Mihail Sergeyitch, a stout, fair-haired doctor, received the friends
with politeness and frigid dignity, and smiled only on one side of his
face.
"Rybnikov and Mayer have spoken to me of your illness already," he said.
"Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, I beg...."
He made Vassilyev sit down in a big armchair near the table, and moved a
box of cigarettes towards him.
"Now then!" he began, stroking his knees. "Let us get to work.... How
old are you?"
He asked questions and the medical student answered them. He asked
whether Vassilyev's father had suffered from certain special diseases,
whether he drank to excess, whether he were remarkable for cruelty or
any peculiarities. He made similar inquiries about his grandfather,
mother, sisters, and brothers. On learning that his mother had a
beautiful voice and sometimes acted on the stage, he grew more animated
at once, and asked:
"Excuse me, but don't you remember, perhaps, your mother had a passion
for the stage?"
Twenty minutes passed. Vassilyev was annoyed by the way the doctor kept
stroking his knees and talking of the same thing.
"So far as I understand your questions, doctor," he said, "you want to
know whether my illness is hereditary or not. It is not."
The doctor proceeded to ask Vassilyev whether he had had any secret
vices as a boy, or had received injuries to his head; whether he had had
any aberrations, any peculiarities, or exceptional propensities. Half
the questions usually asked by doctors of their patients can be left
unanswered without the slightest ill effect on the health, but Mihail
Sergeyitch, the medical student, and the artist all looked as though if
Vassilyev failed to answer one question all would be lost. As he
received answers, the doctor for some reason noted them down on a slip
of paper. On learning that Vassilyev had taken his degree in natural
science, and was now studying law, the doctor pondered.
"He wrote a first-rate piece of original work last year,..." said the
medical student.
"I beg your pardon, but don't interrupt me; you prevent me from
concentrating," said the doctor, and he smiled on one side of his face.
"Though, of course, that does enter into the diagnosis. Intense
intellectual work, nervous exhaustion.... Yes, yes.... And do you drink
vodka?" he said, addressing Vassilyev.
"Very rarely."
Another twenty minutes passed. The medical student began telling the
doctor in a low voice his opinion as to the immediate cause of the
attack, and described how the day before yesterday the artist,
Vassilyev, and he had visited S. Street.
The indifferent, reserved, and frigid tone in which his friends and the
doctor spoke of the women and that miserable street struck Vassilyev as
strange in the extreme....
"Doctor, tell me one thing only," he said, controlling himself so as not
to speak rudely. "Is prostitution an evil or not?"
"My dear fellow, who disputes it?" said the doctor, with an expression
that suggested that he had settled all such questions for himself long
ago. "Who disputes it?"
"You are a mental doctor, aren't you?" Vassilyev asked curtly.
"Yes, a mental doctor."
"Perhaps all of you are right!" said Vassilyev, getting up and beginning
to walk from one end of the room to the other. "Perhaps! But it all
seems marvelous to me! That I should have taken my degree in two
faculties you look upon as a great achievement; because I have written a
work which in three years will be thrown aside and forgotten, I am
praised up to the skies; but because I cannot speak of fallen women as
unconcernedly as of these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am
called mad, I am pitied!"
Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for
himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two days
before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank into a chair.
His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with the air
of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of feeling
himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev and, without a
word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then, when he was calmer,
undressed him and began to investigate the degree of sensibility of the
skin, the reflex action of the knees, and so on.
And Vassilyev felt easier. When he came out from the doctor's he was
beginning to feel ashamed; the rattle of the carriages no longer
irritated him, and the load at his heart grew lighter and lighter as
though it were melting away. He had two prescriptions in his hand: one
was for bromide, one was for morphia.... He had taken all these remedies
before.
In the street he stood still and, saying good-by to his friends, dragged
himself languidly to the University.
MISERY "To whom shall I tell my grief?"
THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily
about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a
thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov,
the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without
stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular
snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it
necessary to shake it off.... His little mare is white and motionless
too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like
straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread
horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away
from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this
slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying
people, is bound to think.
It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came out of
the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But now the shades
of evening are falling on the town. The pale light of the street lamps
changes to a vivid color, and the bustle of the street grows noisier.
"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"
Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in
a military overcoat with a hood over his head.
"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!"
In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of
snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into
the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like
a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes
his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and
hesitatingly sets of....
"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts from
the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the devil are you
going? Keep to the r-right!"
"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the officer
angrily.
A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing the
road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him
angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as
though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes
about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why
he was there.
"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are simply
doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet.
They must be doing it on purpose."
Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips.... Apparently he means to say
something, but nothing comes but a sniff.
"What?" inquires the officer.
Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily:
"My son... er... my son died this week, sir."
"H'm! What did he die of?"
Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:
"Who can tell! It must have been from fever.... He lay three days in the
hospital and then he died.... God's will."
"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you gone
cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"
"Drive on! drive on!..." says the officer. "We shan't get there till to-
morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"
The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with
heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at the
officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently
disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops
by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.... Again the wet
snow paints him and his horse white. One hour passes, and then
another....
Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up,
railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their
goloshes.
"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked voice.
"The three of us,... twenty kopecks!"
Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a
fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is a rouble or
whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now so long as he has
a fare.... The three young men, shoving each other and using bad
language, go up to the sledge, and all three try to sit down at once.
The question remains to be settled: Which are to sit down and which one
is to stand? After a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they come
to the conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the
shortest.
"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling
himself and breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What a cap you've
got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all Petersburg...."
"He-he!... he-he!..." laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast of!"
"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like
this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?"
"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs' yesterday
Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us."
"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall one
angrily. "You lie like a brute."
"Strike me dead, it's the truth!..."
"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."
"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"
"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly. "Will you
get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her
one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her well."
Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of the
hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the
feeling of loneliness begins little by little to be less heavy on his
heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some elaborately
whimsical string of epithets and is overpowered by his cough. His tall
companions begin talking of a certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks
round at them. Waiting till there is a brief pause, he looks round once
more and says:
"This week... er... my... er... son died!"
"We shall all die,..." says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping his lips
after coughing. "Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I simply cannot
stand crawling like this! When will he get us there?"
"Well, you give him a little encouragement... one in the neck!"
"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands on
ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you hear, you
old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say?"
And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.
"He-he!..." he laughs. "Merry gentlemen.... God give you health!"
"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.
"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the damp
earth.... He-ho-ho!.... The grave that is!... Here my son's dead and I
am alive.... It's a strange thing, death has come in at the wrong
door.... Instead of coming for me it went for my son...."
And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that point
the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank God! they
have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks, Iona gazes for a
long while after the revelers, who disappear into a dark entry. Again he
is alone and again there is silence for him.... The misery which has
been for a brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more
cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes
stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the
street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to
him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery.... His
misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and
his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but
yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant
shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....
Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to address
him.
"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.
"Going on for ten.... Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"
Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives himself up
to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to people. But before
five minutes have passed he draws himself up, shakes his head as though
he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the reins.... He can bear it no
longer.
"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"
And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to trotting.
An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty stove. On the
stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people snoring. The air is
full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at the sleeping figures,
scratches himself, and regrets that he has come home so early....
"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks. "That's
why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his work,... who has
had enough to eat, and whose horse has had enough to eat, is always at
ease...."
In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat
sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.
"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.
"Seems so."
"May it do you good.... But my son is dead, mate.... Do you hear? This
week in the hospital.... It's a queer business...."
Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees nothing.
The young man has covered his head over and is already asleep. The old
man sighs and scratches himself.... Just as the young man had been
thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech. His son will soon have been
dead a week, and he has not really talked to anybody yet.... He wants to
talk of it properly, with deliberation.... He wants to tell how his son
was taken ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he
died.... He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to the
hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter Anisya in
the country.... And he wants to talk about her too.... Yes, he has
plenty to talk about now. His listener ought to sigh and exclaim and
lament.... It would be even better to talk to women. Though they are
silly creatures, they blubber at the first word.
"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There is
always time for sleep.... You'll have sleep enough, no fear...."
He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is
standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather.... He
cannot think about his son when he is alone.... To talk about him with
someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is insufferable
anguish....
"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes. "There,
munch away, munch away.... Since we have not earned enough for oats, we
will eat hay.... Yes,... I have grown too old to drive.... My son ought
to be driving, not I.... He was a real cabman.... He ought to have
lived...."
Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:
"That's how it is, old girl.... Kuzma Ionitch is gone.... He said good-
by to me.... He went and died for no reason.... Now, suppose you had a
little colt, and you were own mother to that little colt. ... And all at
once that same little colt went and died.... You'd be sorry, wouldn't
you?..."
The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's hands.
Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.
CHAMPAGNE A WAYFARER'S STORY