hall of the gardenwing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, with no bedclothes
on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in the corner. The seals
on the door that led into the prisoner's room were unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped
into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. The prisoner himself
sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands were
visible. On the table, the two chairs, the carpet by the table open
books were strewn.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen years
confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the
window with his finger, but the prisoner gave no movement in reply. Then
the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key into
the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked. The
banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of
steps. Three minutes passed and it was as quiet behind the door as it
had been before. He made up his mind to enter. Before the table sat a
man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton, with tight-drawn
skin, with a woman's long curly hair, and a shaggy beard. The colour of
his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the
back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head
was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon. His hair was
already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at the senile
emaciation of the face would have believed that he was only forty years
old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which
something was written in a tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first,
let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and the
right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun I
think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear conscience
and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise freedom,
life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of the world.
"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw
neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant
wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved
women.... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the
magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed the
summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from thence how the sun rose in
the morning, and in the evening overflowed the sky, the ocean and the
mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from thence how above me
lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests, fields,
rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing of the
pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came flying to
me to speak of God.... In your books I cast myself into bottomless
abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new
religions, conquered whole countries....
"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created in
the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I
am more clever than you all.
"And I despise your books, despise all wordly blessings and wisdom.
Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive like a mirage. Though
you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the
face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your
history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen
slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take lie for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions there
should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit, frogs
and lizards, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of a
sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for
earth. I do not want to understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I
waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which
I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I shall
come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and thus
shall violate the agreement."
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the head
of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing. Never at
any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the Exchange, had
he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on
his bed, but agitation and tears kept him long from sleep....
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him that
they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing through the window
into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared. Together with
his servants the banker went instantly to the wing and established the
escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he took the paper
with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked it in
his safe. A TEDIOUS STORY (FROM AN OLD MAN'S JOURNAL) I
There lives in Russia an emeritus professor, Nicolai Stiepanovich ...
privy councillor and knight. He has so many Russian and foreign Orders
that when he puts them on the students call him "the holy picture." His
acquaintance is most distinguished. Not a single famous scholar lived or
died during the last twenty-five or thirty years but he was intimately
acquainted with him. Now he has no one to be friendly with, but speaking
of the past the long list of his eminent friends would end with such
names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and the poet Nekrasov, who bestowed upon him
their warmest and most sincere friendship. He is a member of all the
Russian and of three foreign universities, et cetera, et cetera. All
this, and a great deal besides, forms what is known as my name.
This name of mine is very popular. It is known to every literate person
in Russia; abroad it is mentioned from professorial chairs with the
epithets "eminent and esteemed." It is reckoned among those fortunate
names which to mention in vain or to abuse in public or in the Press is
considered a mark of bad breeding. Indeed, it should be so; because with
my name is inseparably associated the idea of a famous, richly gifted,
and indubitably useful person. I am a steady worker, with the endurance
of a camel, which is important. I am also endowed with talent, which is
still more important. In passing, I would add that I am a well-educated,
modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into letters or
politics, never sought popularity in disputes with the ignorant, and
made no speeches either at dinners or at my colleagues' funerals.
Altogether there is not a single spot on my learned name, and it has
nothing to complain of. It is fortunate.
The bearer of this name, that is myself, is a man of sixty-two, with a
bald head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant and
prepossessing, as I, myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands tremble
from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev's heroines,
resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow and my back
narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I smile my whole
face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles. There is nothing imposing
in my pitiable face, save that when I suffer from the tic, I have a
singular expression which compels anyone who looks at me to think: "This
man will die soon, for sure."
I can still read pretty well; I can still hold the attention of my
audience for two hours. My passionate manner, the literary form of my
exposition and my humour make the defects of my voice almost
unnoticeable, though it is dry, harsh, and hard like a hypocrite's. But
I write badly. The part of my brain which governs the ability to write
refused office. My memory has weakened, and my thoughts are too
inconsequent; and when I expound them on paper, I always have a feeling
that I have lost the sense of their organic connection. The construction
is monotonous, and the sentence feeble and timid. I often do not write
what I want to, and when I write the end I cannot remember the
beginning. I often forget common words, and in writing a letter I always
have to waste much energy in order to avoid superfluous sentences and
unnecessary incidental statements; both bear clear witness of the decay
of my intellectual activity. And it is remarkable that, the simpler the
letter, the more tormenting is my effort. When writing a scientific
article I fed much freer and much more intelligent than in writing a
letter of welcome or a report. One thing more: it is easier for me to
write German or English than Russian.
As regards my present life, I must first of all note insomnia, from
which I have begun to suffer lately. If I were asked: "What is now the
chief and fundamental fact of your existence?" I would answer:
"Insomnia." From habit, I still undress at midnight precisely and get
into bed. I soon fall asleep but wake just after one with the feeling
that I have not slept at all. I must get out of bed and light the lamp.
For an hour or two I walk about the room from corner to corner and
inspect the long familiar pictures. When I am weary of walking I sit
down to the table. I sit motionless thinking of nothing, feeling no
desires; if a book lies before me I draw it mechanically towards me and
read without interest. Thus lately in one night I read mechanically a
whole novel with a strange title, "Of What the Swallow Sang." Or in
order to occupy my attention I make myself count to a thousand, or I
imagine the face of some one of my friends, and begin to remember in
what year and under what circumstances he joined the faculty. I love to
listen to sounds. Now, two rooms away from me my daughter Liza will say
something quickly, in her sleep; then my wife will walk through the
drawing-room with a candle and infallibly drop the box of matches. Then
the shrinking wood of the cupboard squeaks or the burner of the lamp
tinkles suddenly, and all these sounds somehow agitate me.
Not to sleep of nights confesses one abnormal; and therefore I wait
impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right not to
sleep. Many oppressive hours pass before the cock crows. He is my
harbinger of good. As soon as he has crowed I know that in an hour's
time the porter downstairs will awake and for some reason or other go up
the stairs, coughing angrily; and later beyond the windows the air
begins to pale gradually and voices echo in the street.
The day begins with the coming of my wife. She comes in to me in a
petticoat, with her hair undone, but already washed and smelling of eau
de Cologne, and looking as though she came in by accident, saying the
same thing every time: "Pardon, I came in for a moment. You haven't
slept again?" Then she puts the lamp out, sits by the table and begins
to talk. I am not a prophet but I know beforehand what the subject of
conversation will be, every morning the same. Usually, after breathless
inquiries after my health, she suddenly remembers our son, the officer,
who is serving in Warsaw. On the twentieth of each month we send him
fifty roubles. This is our chief subject of conversation.
"Of course it is hard on us," my wife sighs. "But until he is finally
settled we are obliged to help him. The boy is among strangers; the pay
is small. But if you like, next month we'll send him forty roubles
instead of fifty. What do you think?"
Daily experience might have convinced my wife that expenses do not grow
less by talking of them. But my wife does not acknowledge experience and
speaks about our officer punctually every day, about bread, thank
Heaven, being cheaper and sugar a half-penny dearer--and all this in a
tone as though it were news to me.
I listen and agree mechanically. Probably because I have not slept
during the night strange idle thoughts take hold of me. I look at my
wife and wonder like a child. In perplexity I ask myself: This old,
stout, clumsy woman, with sordid cares and anxiety about bread and
butter written in the dull expression of her face, her eyes tired with
eternal thoughts of debts and poverty, who can talk only of expenses and
smile only when things are cheap--was this once the slim Varya whom I
loved passionately for her fine clear mind, her pure soul, her beauty,
and as Othello loved Desdemona, for her "compassion" of my science? Is
she really the same, my wife Varya, who bore me a son?
I gaze intently into the fat, clumsy old woman's face. I seek in her my
Varya; but from the past nothing remains but her fear for my health and
her way of calling my salary "our" salary and my hat "our" hat. It pains
me to look at her, and to console her, if only a little, I let her talk
as she pleases, and I am silent even when she judges people unjustly, or
scolds me because I do not practise and do not publish text-books.
Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly remembers
that I have not yet had tea, and gives a start:
"Why am I sitting down?" she says, getting up. "The samovar has been on
the table a long while, and I sit chatting. How forgetful I am? Good
gracious!"
She hurries away, but stops at the door to say:
"We owe Yegor five months' wages. Do you realise it? It's a bad thing to
let the servants' wages run on. I've said so often. It's much easier to
pay ten roubles every month than fifty for five!"
Outside the door she stops again:
"I pity our poor Liza more than anybody. The girl studies at the
Conservatoire. She's always in good society, and the Lord only knows how
she's dressed. That fur-coat of hers! It's a sin to show yourself in the
street in it. If she had a different father, it would do, but everyone
knows he is a famous professor, a privy councillor."
So, having reproached me for my name and title, she goes away at last.
Thus begins my day. It does not improve.
When I have drunk my tea, Liza comes in, in a fur-coat and hat, with her
music, ready to go to the Conservatoire. She is twenty-two. She looks
younger. She is pretty, rather like my wife when she was young. She
kisses me tenderly on my forehead and my hand.
"Good morning, Papa. Quite well?"
As a child she adored ice-cream, and I often had to take her to a
confectioner's. Ice-cream was her standard of beauty. If she wanted to
praise me, she used to say: "Papa, you are ice-creamy." One finger she
called the pistachio, the other the cream, the third the raspberry
finger and so on. And when she came to say good morning, I used to lift
her on to my knees and kiss her fingers, and say:
"The cream one, the pistachio one, the lemon one."
And now from force of habit I kiss Liza's fingers and murmur:
"Pistachio one, cream one, lemon one." But it does not sound the same. I
am cold like the ice-cream and I feel ashamed. When my daughter comes in
and touches my forehead with her lips I shudder as though a bee had
stung my forehead, I smile constrainedly and turn away my face. Since my
insomnia began a question has been driving like a nail into my brain. My
daughter continually sees how terribly I, an old man, blush because I
owe the servant his wages; she sees how often the worry of small debts
forces me to leave my work and to pace the room from corner to corner
for hours, thinking; but why hasn't she, even once, come to me without
telling her mother and whispered: "Father, here's my watch, bracelets,
earrings, dresses.... Pawn them all.... You need money"? Why, seeing how
I and her mother try to hide our poverty, out of false pride--why does
she not deny herself the luxury of music lessons? I would not accept the
watch, the bracelets, or her sacrifices--God forbid!--I do not want that.
Which reminds me of my son, the Warsaw officer. He is a clever, honest,
and sober fellow. But that doesn't mean very much. If I had an old
father, and I knew that there were moments when he was ashamed of his
poverty, I think I would give up my commission to someone else and hire
myself out as a navvy. These thoughts of the children poison me. What
good are they? Only a mean and irritable person Can take refuge in
thinking evil of ordinary people because they are not heroes. But enough
of that.
At a quarter to ten I have to go and lecture to my dear boys. I dress
myself and walk the road I have known these thirty years. For me it has
a history of its own. Here is a big grey building with a chemist's shop
beneath. A tiny house once stood there, and it was a beer-shop. In this
beer-shop I thought out my thesis, and wrote my first love-letter to
Varya. I wrote it in pencil on a scrap of paper that began "Historia
Morbi." Here is a grocer's shop. It used to belong to a little Jew who
sold me cigarettes on credit, and later on to a fat woman who loved
students "because every one of them had a mother." Now a red-headed
merchant sits there, a very nonchalant man, who drinks tea from a copper
tea-pot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University that have not
been repaired for years; a weary porter in a sheepskin coat, a broom,
heaps of snow ... Such gates cannot produce a good impression on a boy
who comes fresh from the provinces and imagines that the temple of
science is really a temple. Certainly, in the history of Russian
pessimism, the age of university buildings, the dreariness of the
corridors, the smoke-stains on the walls, the meagre light, the dismal
appearance of the stairs, the clothes-pegs and the benches, hold one of
the foremost places in the series of predisposing causes. Here is our
garden. It does not seem to have grown any better or any worse since I
was a student. I do not like it. It would be much more sensible if tall
pine-trees and fine oaks grew there instead of consumptive lime-trees,
yellow acacias and thin clipped lilac. The student's mood is created
mainly by every one of the surroundings in which he studies; therefore
he must see everywhere before him only what is great and strong and
exquisite. Heaven preserve him from starveling trees, broken windows,
and drab walls and doors covered with tom oilcloth.
As I approach my main staircase the door is open wide. I am met by my
old friend, of the same age and name as I, Nicolas the porter. He grunts
as he lets me in:
"It's frosty, Your Excellency."
Or if my coat is wet:
"It's raining a bit, Your Excellency."
Then he runs in front of me and opens all the doors on my way. In the
study he carefully takes off my coat and at the same time manages to
tell me some university news. Because of the close acquaintance that
exists between all the University porters and keepers, he knows all that
happens in the four faculties, in the registry, in the chancellor's
cabinet, and the library. He knows everything. When, for instance, the
resignation of the rector or dean is under discussion, I hear him
talking to the junior porters, naming candidates and explaining offhand
that so and so will not be approved by the Minister, so and so will
himself refuse the honour; then he plunges into fantastic details of
some mysterious papers received in the registry, of a secret
conversation which appears to have taken place between the Minister and
the curator, and so on. These details apart, he is almost always right.
The impressions he forms of each candidate are original, but also true.
If you want to know who read his thesis, joined the staff, resigned or
died in a particular year, then you must seek the assistance of this
veteran's colossal memory. He will not only name you the year, month,
and day, but give you the accompanying details of this or any other
event. Such memory is the privilege of love.
He is the guardian of the university traditions. From the porters before
him he inherited many legends of the life of the university. He added to
this wealth much of his own and if you like he will tell you many
stories, long or short. He can tell you of extraordinary savants who
knew everything, of remarkable scholars who did not sleep for weeks on
end, of numberless martyrs to science; good triumphs over evil with him.
The weak always conquer the strong, the wise man the fool, the modest
the proud, the young the old. There is no need to take all these legends
and stories for sterling; but filter them, and you will find what you
want in your filter, a noble tradition and the names of true heroes
acknowledged by all.
In our society all the information about the learned world consists
entirely of anecdotes of the extraordinary absent-mindedness of old
professors, and of a handful of jokes, which are ascribed to Guber or to
myself or to Baboukhin. But this is too little for an educated society.
If it loved science, savants and students as Nicolas loves them, it
would long ago have had a literature of whole epics, stories, and
biographies. But unfortunately this is yet to be.
The news told, Nicolas looks stem and we begin to talk business. If an
outsider were then to hear how freely Nicolas uses the jargon, he would
be inclined to think that he was a scholar, posing as a soldier. By the
way, the rumours of the university-porter's erudition are very
exaggerated. It is true that Nicolas knows more than a hundred Latin
tags, can put a skeleton together and on occasion make a preparation,
can make the students laugh with a long learned quotation, but the
simple theory of the circulation of the blood is as dark to him now as
it was twenty years ago.
At the table in my room, bent low over a book or a preparation, sits my
dissector, Peter Ignatievich. He is a hardworking, modest man of thirty-
five without any gifts, already bald and with a big belly. He works from
morning to night, reads tremendously and remembers everything he has
read. In this respect he is not merely an excellent man, but a man of
gold; but in all others he is a cart-horse, or if you like a learned
blockhead. The characteristic traits of a cart-horse which distinguish
him from a creature of talent are these. His outlook is narrow,
absolutely bounded by his specialism. Apart from his own subject he is
as naive as a child. I remember once entering the room and saying:
"Think what bad luck! They say, Skobielev is dead."
Nicolas crossed himself; but Peter Ignatievich turned to me:
"Which Skobielev do you mean?"
Another time,--some time earlier--I announced that Professor Pierov was
dead. That darling Peter Ignatievich asked:
"What was his subject?"
I imagine that if Patti sang into his ear, or Russia were attacked by
hordes of Chinamen, or there was an earthquake, he would not lift a
finger, but would go on in the quietest way with his eye screwed over
his microscope. In a word: "What's Hecuba to him?" I would give anything
to see how this dry old stick goes to bed with his wife.
Another trait: a fanatical belief in the infallibility of science, above
all in everything that the Germans write. He is sure of himself and his
preparations, knows the purpose of life, is absolutely ignorant of the
doubts and disillusionments that turn talents grey,--a slavish worship of
the authorities, and not a shadow of need to think for himself. It is
hard to persuade him and quite impossible to discuss with him. Just try
a discussion with a man who is profoundly convinced that the best
science is medicine, the best men doctors, the best traditions--the
medical! From the ugly past of medicine only one tradition has
survived,--the white necktie that doctors wear still. For a learned, and
more generally for an educated person there can exist only a general
university tradition, without any division into traditions of medicine,
of law, and so on. But it's quite impossible for Peter Ignatievich to
agree with that; and he is ready to argue it with you till doomsday.
His future is quite plain to me. During the whole of his life he will
make several hundred preparations of extraordinary purity, will write
any number of dry, quite competent, essays, will make about ten
scrupulously accurate translations; but he won't invent gunpowder. For
gunpowder, imagination is wanted, inventiveness, and a gift for
divination, and Peter Ignatievich has nothing of the kind. In short, he
is not a master of science but a labourer.