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. . . .
A STORY WITHOUT AN END
SOON after two o'clock one night, long ago, the cook, pale and agitated,
rushed unexpectedly into my study and informed me that Madame Mimotih,
the old woman who owned the house next door, was sitting in her kitchen.
"She begs you to go in to her, sir . . ." said the cook, panting.
"Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . . He has shot himself
or hanged himself. . . ."
"What can I do?" said I. "Let her go for the doctor or for the police!"
"How is she to look for a doctor! She can hardly breathe, and she has
huddled under the stove, she is so frightened. . . . You had better go
round, sir."
I put on my coat and hat and went to Madame Mimotih's house. The gate
towards which I directed my steps was open. After pausing beside it,
uncertain what to do, I went into the yard without feeling for the
porter's bell. In the dark and dilapidated porch the door was not
locked. I opened it and walked into the entry. Here there was not a
glimmer of light, it was pitch dark, and, moreover, there was a marked
smell of incense. Groping my way out of the entry I knocked my elbow
against something made of iron, and in the darkness stumbled against a
board of some sort which almost fell to the floor. At last the door
covered with torn baize was found, and I went into a little hall.
I am not at the moment writing a fairy tale, and am far from intending
to alarm the reader, but the picture I saw from the passage was
fantastic and could only have been drawn by death. Straight before me
was a door leading to a little drawing-room. Three five-kopeck wax
candles, standing in a row, threw a scanty light on the faded slate-
coloured wallpaper. A coffin was standing on two tables in the middle of
the little room. The two candles served only to light up a swarthy
yellow face with a half-open mouth and sharp nose. Billows of muslin
were mingled in disorder from the face to the tips of the two shoes, and
from among the billows peeped out two pale motionless hands, holding a
wax cross. The dark gloomy corners of the little drawing-room, the ikons
behind the coffin, the coffin itself, everything except the softly
glimmering lights, were still as death, as the tomb itself.
"How strange!" I thought, dumbfoundered by the unexpected panorama of
death. "Why this haste? The lodger has hardly had time to hang himself,
or shoot himself, and here is the coffin already!"
I looked round. On the left there was a door with a glass panel; on the
right a lame hat-stand with a shabby fur coat on it. . . .
"Water. . . ." I heard a moan.
The moan came from the left, beyond the door with the glass panel. I
opened the door and walked into a little dark room with a solitary
window, through which there came a faint light from a street lamp
outside.
"Is anyone here?" I asked.
And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what I saw
while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stained floor at my
very feet. If my step had been a longer one I should have trodden on
him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands pressed on the floor, he
was making an effort to raise his handsome face, which was deathly pale
against his pitch-black beard. In the big eyes which he lifted upon me,
I read unutterable terror, pain, and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in
big drops down his face. That sweat, the expression of his face, the
trembling of the hands he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his
clenched teeth, showed that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his
right hand in a pool of blood lay a revolver.
"Don't go away," I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out.
"There's a candle on the table."
I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not
knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor, and
it seemed to me that I had seen him before.
"The pain is insufferable," he whispered, "and I haven't the strength to
shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will."
I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him from
the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather covered sofa
and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and cold when I took off
his clothes; the wound which I saw was not in keeping either with his
shivering nor the expression on his face. It was a trifling one. The
bullet had passed between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side,
only piercing the skin and the flesh. I found the bullet itself in the
folds of the coat-lining near the back pocket. Stopping the bleeding as
best I could and making a temporary bandage of a pillow-case, a towel,
and two handkerchiefs, I gave the wounded man some water and covered him
with a fur coat that was hanging in the passage. We neither of us said a
word while the bandaging was being done. I did my work while he lay
motionless looking at me with his eyes screwed up as though he were
ashamed of his unsuccessful shot and the trouble he was giving me.
"Now I must trouble you to lie still," I said, when I had finished the
bandaging, "while I run to the chemist and get something."
"No need!" he muttered, clutching me by the sleeve and opening his eyes
wide.
I read terror in his eyes. He was afraid of my going away.
"No need! Stay another five minutes . . . ten. If it doesn't disgust
you, do stay, I entreat you."
As he begged me he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. I
obeyed, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Ten minutes passed in
silence. I sat silent, looking about the room into which fate had
brought me so unexpectedly. What poverty! This man who was the possessor
of a handsome, effeminate face and a luxuriant well-tended beard, had
surroundings which a humble working man would not have envied. A sofa
with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humble greasy-looking
chair, a table covered with a little of paper, and a wretched oleograph
on the wall, that was all I saw. Damp, gloomy, and grey.
"What a wind!" said the sick man, without opening his eyes, "How it
whistles!"
"Yes," I said. "I say, I fancy I know you. Didn't you take part in some
private theatricals in General Luhatchev's villa last year?"
"What of it?" he asked, quickly opening his eyes.
A cloud seemed to pass over his face.
"I certainly saw you there. Isn't your name Vassilyev?"
"If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should know me."
"No, but I just asked you."
Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his face to
the back of the sofa.
"I don't understand your curiosity," he muttered. "You'll be asking me
next what it was drove me to commit suicide!"
Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, opened his
eyes and said in a tearful voice:
"Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you'll admit I'm right! To ask a
convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot himself is not
generous . . . and indelicate. To think of gratifying idle curiosity at
the expense of another man's nerves!"
"There is no need to excite yourself. . . . It never occurred to me to
question you about your motives."
"You would have asked. . . . It's what people always do. Though it would
be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or understand. .
. . I must own I don't understand it myself. . . . There are phrases
used in the police reports and newspapers such as: 'unrequited love,'
and 'hopeless poverty,' but the reasons are not known. . . . They are
not known to me, nor to you, nor to your newspaper offices, where they
have the impudence to write 'The diary of a suicide.' God alone
understands the state of a man's soul when he takes his own life; but
men know nothing about it."
"That is all very nice," I said, "but you oughtn't to talk. . . ."
But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist, and
went on in the tone of some great professor:
"Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide! How
can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch up a
revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth a rotten egg.
It all depends most likely on the particular condition of the individual
at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had
a passionate desire for death, now when the candle is lighted, and you
are sitting by me, I don't even think of the hour of death. Explain that
change if you can! Am I better off, or has my wife risen from the dead?
Is it the influence of the light on me, or the presence of an outsider?"
"The light certainly has an influence . . ." I muttered for the sake of
saying something. "The influence of light on the organism . . . ."
"The influence of light. . . . We admit it! But you know men do shoot
themselves by candle-light! And it would be ignominious indeed for the
heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candle were to
change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsense can be
explained perhaps, but not by us. It's useless to ask questions or give
explanations of what one does not understand. . . ."
"Forgive me," I said, "but . . . judging by the expression of your face,
it seems to me that at this moment you . . . are posing."
"Yes," Vassilyev said, startled. "It's very possible! I am naturally
vain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your power of
reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now I am posing.
. . . Explain that if you can."
These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was
exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began scrutinising
his face. It was as pale as a dead man's. It seemed as though life were
almost extinct in him, and only the signs of the suffering that the
"vain and fatuous" man was feeling betrayed that it was still alive. It
was painful to look at that face, but what must it have been for
Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength to argue and, if I were not
mistaken, to pose?
"You here--are you here?" he asked suddenly, raising himself on his
elbow. "My God, just listen!"
I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window,
never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and
lugubriously.
"'And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness and
rejoicing.'" Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in the
drawing-room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nor dropping the
monotonous dreary key.
"It is cheerful, isn't it?" whispered Vassilyev, turning his frightened
eyes towards me. "My God, the things a man has to see and hear! If only
one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says, 'it would--
"Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and
ears."
"How well I should have understood that music then! How I should have
felt it! What time is it?"
"Five minutes to three."