Whether they killed him next morning, or mocked at him--that is,
left him his life--he was ruined, anyway. Whether this disgraced
woman killed herself in her shame and despair, or dragged on her
pitiful existence, she was ruined anyway.
So thought Laevsky as he sat at the table late in the evening, still
rubbing his hands. The windows suddenly blew open with a bang; a
violent gust of wind burst into the room, and the papers fluttered
from the table. Laevsky closed the windows and bent down to pick
up the papers. He was aware of something new in his body, a sort
of awkwardness he had not felt before, and his movements were strange
to him. He moved timidly, jerking with his elbows and shrugging his
shoulders; and when he sat down to the table again, he again began
rubbing his hands. His body had lost its suppleness.
On the eve of death one ought to write to one's nearest relation.
Laevsky thought of this. He took a pen and wrote with a tremulous
hand:
"Mother!"
He wanted to write to beg his mother, for the sake of the merciful
God in whom she believed, that she would give shelter and bring a
little warmth and kindness into the life of the unhappy woman who,
by his doing, had been disgraced and was in solitude, poverty, and
weakness, that she would forgive and forget everything, everything,
everything, and by her sacrifice atone to some extent for her son's
terrible sin. But he remembered how his mother, a stout, heavily-built
old woman in a lace cap, used to go out into the garden in the
morning, followed by her companion with the lap-dog; how she used
to shout in a peremptory way to the gardener and the servants, and
how proud and haughty her face was--he remembered all this and
scratched out the word he had written.
There was a vivid flash of lightning at all three windows, and it
was followed by a prolonged, deafening roll of thunder, beginning
with a hollow rumble and ending with a crash so violent that all
the window-panes rattled. Laevsky got up, went to the window, and
pressed his forehead against the pane. There was a fierce, magnificent
storm. On the horizon lightning-flashes were flung in white streams
from the storm-clouds into the sea, lighting up the high, dark waves
over the far-away expanse. And to right and to left, and, no doubt,
over the house too, the lightning flashed.
"The storm!" whispered Laevsky; he had a longing to pray to some
one or to something, if only to the lightning or the storm-clouds.
"Dear storm!"
He remembered how as a boy he used to run out into the garden without
a hat on when there was a storm, and how two fair-haired girls with
blue eyes used to run after him, and how they got wet through with
the rain; they laughed with delight, but when there was a loud peal
of thunder, the girls used to nestle up to the boy confidingly,
while he crossed himself and made haste to repeat: "Holy, holy,
holy. . . ." Oh, where had they vanished to! In what sea were they
drowned, those dawning days of pure, fair life? He had no fear of
the storm, no love of nature now; he had no God. All the confiding
girls he had ever known had by now been ruined by him and those
like him. All his life he had not planted one tree in his own garden,
nor grown one blade of grass; and living among the living, he had
not saved one fly; he had done nothing but destroy and ruin, and
lie, lie. . . .
"What in my past was not vice?" he asked himself, trying to clutch
at some bright memory as a man falling down a precipice clutches
at the bushes.
School? The university? But that was a sham. He had neglected his
work and forgotten what he had learnt. The service of his country?
That, too, was a sham, for he did nothing in the Service, took a
salary for doing nothing, and it was an abominable swindling of the
State for which one was not punished.
He had no craving for truth, and had not sought it; spellbound by
vice and lying, his conscience had slept or been silent. Like a
stranger, like an alien from another planet, he had taken no part
in the common life of men, had been indifferent to their sufferings,
their ideas, their religion, their sciences, their strivings, and
their struggles. He had not said one good word, not written one
line that was not useless and vulgar; he had not done his fellows
one ha'p'orth of service, but had eaten their bread, drunk their
wine, seduced their wives, lived on their thoughts, and to justify
his contemptible, parasitic life in their eyes and in his own, he
had always tried to assume an air of being higher and better than
they. Lies, lies, lies. . . .
He vividly remembered what he had seen that evening at Muridov's,
and he was in an insufferable anguish of loathing and misery. Kirilin
and Atchmianov were loathsome, but they were only continuing what
he had begun; they were his accomplices and his disciples. This
young weak woman had trusted him more than a brother, and he had
deprived her of her husband, of her friends and of her country, and
had brought her here--to the heat, to fever, and to boredom; and
from day to day she was bound to reflect, like a mirror, his idleness,
his viciousness and falsity--and that was all she had had to fill
her weak, listless, pitiable life. Then he had grown sick of her,
had begun to hate her, but had not had the pluck to abandon her,
and he had tried to entangle her more and more closely in a web of
lies. . . . These men had done the rest.
Laevsky sat at the table, then got up and went to the window; at
one minute he put out the candle and then he lighted it again. He
cursed himself aloud, wept and wailed, and asked forgiveness; several
times he ran to the table in despair, and wrote:
"Mother!"
Except his mother, he had no relations or near friends; but how
could his mother help him? And where was she? He had an impulse to
run to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, to fall at her feet, to kiss her hands
and feet, to beg her forgiveness; but she was his victim, and he
was afraid of her as though she were dead.
"My life is ruined," he repeated, rubbing his hands. "Why am I still
alive, my God! . . ."
He had cast out of heaven his dim star; it had fallen, and its track
was lost in the darkness of night. It would never return to the sky
again, because life was given only once and never came a second
time. If he could have turned back the days and years of the past,
he would have replaced the falsity with truth, the idleness with
work, the boredom with happiness; he would have given back purity
to those whom he had robbed of it. He would have found God and
goodness, but that was as impossible as to put back the fallen star
into the sky, and because it was impossible he was in despair.
When the storm was over, he sat by the open window and thought
calmly of what was before him. Von Koren would most likely kill
him. The man's clear, cold theory of life justified the destruction
of the rotten and the useless; if it changed at the crucial moment,
it would be the hatred and the repugnance that Laevsky inspired in
him that would save him. If he missed his aim or, in mockery of his
hated opponent, only wounded him, or fired in the air, what could
he do then? Where could he go?
"Go to Petersburg?" Laevsky asked himself. But that would mean
beginning over again the old life which he cursed. And the man who
seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find
nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him. Seek salvation
in men? In whom and how? Samoylenko's kindness and generosity could
no more save him than the deacon's laughter or Von Koren's hatred.
He must look for salvation in himself alone, and if there were no
finding it, why waste time? He must kill himself, that was
all. . . .
He heard the sound of a carriage. It was getting light. The carriage
passed by, turned, and crunching on the wet sand, stopped near the
house. There were two men in the carriage.
"Wait a minute; I'm coming directly," Laevsky said to them out of
the window. "I'm not asleep. Surely it's not time yet?"
"Yes, it's four o'clock. By the time we get there . . . ."
Laevsky put on his overcoat and cap, put some cigarettes in his
pocket, and stood still hesitating. He felt as though there was
something else he must do. In the street the seconds talked in low
voices and the horses snorted, and this sound in the damp, early
morning, when everybody was asleep and light was hardly dawning in
the sky, filled Laevsky's soul with a disconsolate feeling which
was like a presentiment of evil. He stood for a little, hesitating,
and went into the bedroom.
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was lying stretched out on the bed, wrapped
from head to foot in a rug. She did not stir, and her whole appearance,
especially her head, suggested an Egyptian mummy. Looking at her
in silence, Laevsky mentally asked her forgiveness, and thought
that if the heavens were not empty and there really were a God,
then He would save her; if there were no God, then she had better
perish--there was nothing for her to live for.
All at once she jumped up, and sat up in bed. Lifting her pale face
and looking with horror at Laevsky, she asked:
"Is it you? Is the storm over?"
"Yes."
She remembered; put both hands to her head and shuddered all over.
"How miserable I am!" she said. "If only you knew how miserable I
am! I expected," she went on, half closing her eyes, "that you would
kill me or turn me out of the house into the rain and storm, but
you delay . . . delay . . ."
Warmly and impulsively he put his arms round her and covered her
knees and hands with kisses. Then when she muttered something and
shuddered with the thought of the past, he stroked her hair, and
looking into her face, realised that this unhappy, sinful woman was
the one creature near and dear to him, whom no one could replace.
When he went out of the house and got into the carriage he wanted
to return home alive.