“You are going before Gregor Matvieitch Mikulin.”
There was nothing formidable about the man bearing that name. His mild,
expectant glance was turned on the door already when Razumov entered.
At once, with the penholder he was holding in his hand, he pointed to a
deep sofa between two windows. He followed Razumov with his eyes while
that last crossed the room and sat down. The mild gaze rested on him,
not curious, not inquisitive--certainly not suspicious--almost
without expression. In its passionless persistence there was something
resembling sympathy.
Razumov, who had prepared his will and his intelligence to encounter
General T--- himself, was profoundly troubled. All the moral bracing
up against the possible excesses of power and passion went for nothing
before this sallow man, who wore a full unclipped beard. It was
fair, thin, and very fine. The light fell in coppery gleams on the
protuberances of a high, rugged forehead. And the aspect of the broad,
soft physiognomy was so homely and rustic that the careful middle
parting of the hair seemed a pretentious affectation.
The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some irritation on his part. I may
remark here that the diary proper consisting of the more or less daily
entries seems to have been begun on that very evening after Mr. Razumov
had returned home.
Mr. Razumov, then, was irritated. His strung-up individuality had gone
to pieces within him very suddenly.
“I must be very prudent with him,” he warned himself in the silence
during which they sat gazing at each other. It lasted some little time,
and was characterized (for silences have their character) by a sort of
sadness imparted to it perhaps by the mild and thoughtful manner of
the bearded official. Razumov learned later that he was the chief of a
department in the General Secretariat, with a rank in the civil service
equivalent to that of a colonel in the army.
Razumov’s mistrust became acute. The main point was, not to be drawn
into saying too much. He had been called there for some reason. What
reason? To be given to understand that he was a suspect--and also no
doubt to be pumped. As to what precisely? There was nothing. Or perhaps
Haldin had been telling lies.... Every alarming uncertainty beset
Razumov. He could bear the silence no longer, and cursing himself for
his weakness spoke first, though he had promised himself not to do so on
any account.
“I haven’t lost a moment’s time,” he began in a hoarse, provoking tone;
and then the faculty of speech seemed to leave him and enter the body of
Councillor Mikulin, who chimed in approvingly--
“Very proper. Very proper. Though as a matter of fact....”
But the spell was broken, and Razumov interrupted him boldly, under
a sudden conviction that this was the safest attitude to take. With a
great flow of words he complained of being totally misunderstood. Even
as he talked with a perception of his own audacity he thought that
the word “misunderstood” was better than the word “mistrusted,” and he
repeated it again with insistence. Suddenly he ceased, being seized
with fright before the attentive immobility of the official. “What am
I talking about?” he thought, eyeing him with a vague gaze.
Mistrusted--not misunderstood--was the right symbol for these people.
Misunderstood was the other kind of curse. Both had been brought on his
head by that fellow Haldin. And his head ached terribly. He passed his
hand over his brow--an involuntary gesture of suffering, which he was
too careless to restrain. At that moment Razumov beheld his own brain
suffering on the rack--a long, pale figure drawn asunder horizontally
with terrific force in the darkness of a vault, whose face he failed to
see. It was as though he had dreamed for an infinitesimal fraction of
time of some dark print of the Inquisition.
It is not to be seriously supposed that Razumov had actually dozed off
and had dreamed in the presence of Councillor Mikulin, of an old print
of the Inquisition. He was indeed extremely exhausted, and he records
a remarkably dream-like experience of anguish at the circumstance
that there was no one whatever near the pale and extended figure. The
solitude of the racked victim was particularly horrible to behold. The
mysterious impossibility to see the face, he also notes, inspired a sort
of terror. All these characteristics of an ugly dream were present. Yet
he is certain that he never lost the consciousness of himself on the
sofa, leaning forward with his hands between his knees and turning his
cap round and round in his fingers. But everything vanished at the voice
of Councillor Mikulin. Razumov felt profoundly grateful for the even
simplicity of its tone.
“Yes. I have listened with interest. I comprehend in a measure your...
But, indeed, you are mistaken in what you....” Councillor Mikulin
uttered a series of broken sentences. Instead of finishing them he
glanced down his beard. It was a deliberate curtailment which somehow
made the phrases more impressive. But he could talk fluently enough, as
became apparent when changing his tone to persuasiveness he went on: “By
listening to you as I did, I think I have proved that I do not regard
our intercourse as strictly official. In fact, I don’t want it to have
that character at all.... Oh yes! I admit that the request for your
presence here had an official form. But I put it to you whether it was a
form which would have been used to secure the attendance of a....”
“Suspect,” exclaimed Razumov, looking straight into the official’s
eyes. They were big with heavy eyelids, and met his boldness with a dim,
steadfast gaze. “A suspect.” The open repetition of that word which
had been haunting all his waking hours gave Razumov a strange sort of
satisfaction. Councillor Mikulin shook his head slightly. “Surely you do
know that I’ve had my rooms searched by the police?”
“I was about to say a ‘misunderstood person,’ when you interrupted me,”
insinuated quietly Councillor Mikulin.
Razumov smiled without bitterness. The renewed sense of his intellectual
superiority sustained him in the hour of danger. He said a little
disdainfully--
“I know I am but a reed. But I beg you to allow me the superiority of
the thinking reed over the unthinking forces that are about to crush
him out of existence. Practical thinking in the last instance is but
criticism. I may perhaps be allowed to express my wonder at this action
of the police being delayed for two full days during which, of course,
I could have annihilated everything compromising by burning it--let us
say--and getting rid of the very ashes, for that matter.”
“You are angry,” remarked the official, with an unutterable simplicity
of tone and manner. “Is that reasonable?”
Razumov felt himself colouring with annoyance.
“I am reasonable. I am even--permit me to say--a thinker, though to
be sure, this name nowadays seems to be the monopoly of hawkers of
revolutionary wares, the slaves of some French or German thought--devil
knows what foreign notions. But I am not an intellectual mongrel. I
think like a Russian. I think faithfully--and I take the liberty to call
myself a thinker. It is not a forbidden word, as far as I know.”
“No. Why should it be a forbidden word?” Councillor Mikulin turned in
his seat with crossed legs and resting his elbow on the table propped
his head on the knuckles of a half-closed hand. Razumov noticed a thick
forefinger clasped by a massive gold band set with a blood-red stone--a
signet ring that, looking as if it could weigh half a pound, was
an appropriate ornament for that ponderous man with the accurate
middle-parting of glossy hair above a rugged Socratic forehead.
“Could it be a wig?” Razumov detected himself wondering with an
unexpected detachment. His self-confidence was much shaken. He resolved
to chatter no more. Reserve! Reserve! All he had to do was to keep
the Ziemianitch episode secret with absolute determination, when the
questions came. Keep Ziemianitch strictly out of all the answers.
Councillor Mikulin looked at him dimly. Razumov’s self-confidence
abandoned him completely. It seemed impossible to keep Ziemianitch out.
Every question would lead to that, because, of course, there was nothing
else. He made an effort to brace himself up. It was a failure. But
Councillor Mikulin was surprisingly detached too.
“Why should it be forbidden?” he repeated. “I too consider myself
a thinking man, I assure you. The principal condition is to think
correctly. I admit it is difficult sometimes at first for a young man
abandoned to himself--with his generous impulses undisciplined, so to
speak--at the mercy of every wild wind that blows. Religious belief, of
course, is a great....”
Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard, and Razumov, whose tension
was relaxed by that unexpected and discursive turn, murmured with gloomy
discontent--
“That man, Haldin, believed in God.”
“Ah! You are aware,” breathed out Councillor Mikulin, making the point
softly, as if with discretion, but making it nevertheless plainly
enough, as if he too were put off his guard by Razumov’s remark.
The young man preserved an impassive, moody countenance, though he
reproached himself bitterly for a pernicious fool, to have given thus an
utterly false impression of intimacy. He kept his eyes on the floor.
“I must positively hold my tongue unless I am obliged to speak,” he
admonished himself. And at once against his will the question, “Hadn’t
I better tell him everything?” presented itself with such force that he
had to bite his lower lip. Councillor Mikulin could not, however, have
nourished any hope of confession. He went on--
“You tell me more than his judges were able to get out of him. He was
judged by a commission of three. He would tell them absolutely nothing.
I have the report of the interrogatories here, by me. After every
question there stands ‘Refuses to answer--refuses to answer.’ It’s like
that page after page. You see, I have been entrusted with some further
investigations around and about this affair. He has left me nothing to
begin my investigations on. A hardened miscreant. And so, you say, he
believed in....”
Again Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard with a faint grimace;
but he did not pause for long. Remarking with a shade of scorn that
blasphemers also had that sort of belief, he concluded by supposing that
Mr. Razumov had conversed frequently with Haldin on the subject.
“No,” said Razumov loudly, without looking up. “He talked and I
listened. That is not a conversation.”
“Listening is a great art,” observed Mikulin parenthetically.
“And getting people to talk is another,” mumbled Razumov.
“Well, no--that is not very difficult,” Mikulin said innocently,
“except, of course, in special cases. For instance, this Haldin. Nothing
could induce him to talk. He was brought four times before the delegated
judges. Four secret interrogatories--and even during the last, when your
personality was put forward....”
“My personality put forward?” repeated Razumov, raising his head
brusquely. “I don’t understand.” Councillor Mikulin turned squarely to
the table, and taking up some sheets of grey foolscap dropped them one
after another, retaining only the last in his hand. He held it before
his eyes while speaking.
“It was--you see--judged necessary. In a case of that gravity no means
of action upon the culprit should be neglected. You understand that
yourself, I am certain.
“Razumov stared with enormous wide eyes at the side view of Councillor
Mikulin, who now was not looking at him at all.
“So it was decided (I was consulted by General T---) that a certain
question should be put to the accused. But in deference to the earnest
wishes of Prince K--- your name has been kept out of the documents
and even from the very knowledge of the judges themselves. Prince K---
recognized the propriety, the necessity of what we proposed to do, but
he was concerned for your safety. Things do leak out--that we can’t
deny. One cannot always answer for the discretion of inferior officials.
There was, of course, the secretary of the special tribunal--one or two
gendarmes in the room. Moreover, as I have said, in deference to Prince
K--- even the judges themselves were to be left in ignorance. The
question ready framed was sent to them by General T--- (I wrote it out
with my own hand) with instructions to put it to the prisoner the very
last of all. Here it is.
“Councillor Mikulin threw back his head into proper focus and went on
reading monotonously: ‘Question--Has the man well known to you, in whose
rooms you remained for several hours on Monday and on whose information
you have been arrested--has he had any previous knowledge of your
intention to commit a political murder?...’ Prisoner refuses to reply.
“Question repeated. Prisoner preserves the same stubborn silence.
“The venerable Chaplain of the Fortress being then admitted and
exhorting the prisoner to repentance, entreating him also to atone for
his crime by an unreserved and full confession which should help to
liberate from the sin of rebellion against the Divine laws and the
sacred Majesty of the Ruler, our Christ-loving land--the prisoner opens
his lips for the first time during this morning’s audience and in a
loud, clear voice rejects the venerable Chaplain’s ministrations.
“At eleven o’clock the Court pronounces in summary form the death
sentence.
“The execution is fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, subject to
further instructions from superior authorities.”
Councillor Mikulin dropped the page of foolscap, glanced down his beard,
and turning to Razumov, added in an easy, explanatory tone--
“We saw no object in delaying the execution. The order to carry out the
sentence was sent by telegraph at noon. I wrote out the telegram myself.
He was hanged at four o’clock this afternoon.”
The definite information of Haldin’s death gave Razumov the feeling of
general lassitude which follows a great exertion or a great excitement.
He kept very still on the sofa, but a murmur escaped him--
“He had a belief in a future existence.”
Councillor Mikulin shrugged his shoulders slightly, and Razumov got up
with an effort. There was nothing now to stay for in that room. Haldin
had been hanged at four o’clock. There could be no doubt of that. He
had, it seemed, entered upon his future existence, long boots, Astrakhan
fur cap and all, down to the very leather strap round his waist. A
flickering, vanishing sort of existence. It was not his soul, it was his
mere phantom he had left behind on this earth--thought Razumov, smiling
caustically to himself while he crossed the room, utterly forgetful of
where he was and of Councillor Mikulin’s existence. The official could
have set a lot of bells ringing all over the building without leaving
his chair. He let Razumov go quite up to the door before he spoke.
“Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch--what are you doing?”
Razumov turned his head and looked at him in silence. He was not in the
least disconcerted. Councillor Mikulin’s arms were stretched out on the
table before him and his body leaned forward a little with an effort of
his dim gaze.
“Was I actually going to clear out like this?” Razumov wondered
at himself with an impassive countenance. And he was aware of this
impassiveness concealing a lucid astonishment.
“Evidently I was going out if he had not spoken,” he thought. “What
would he have done then? I must end this affair one way or another. I
must make him show his hand.”
For a moment longer he reflected behind the mask as it were, then let go
the door-handle and came back to the middle of the room.
“I’ll tell you what you think,” he said explosively, but not raising his
voice. “You think that you are dealing with a secret accomplice of that
unhappy man. No, I do not know that he was unhappy. He did not tell me.
He was a wretch from my point of view, because to keep alive a false
idea is a greater crime than to kill a man. I suppose you will not deny
that? I hated him! Visionaries work everlasting evil on earth. Their
Utopias inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust of reality and a
contempt for the secular logic of human development.”
Razumov shrugged his shoulders and stared. “What a tirade!” he thought.
The silence and immobility of Councillor Mikulin impressed him. The
bearded bureaucrat sat at his post, mysteriously self-possessed like an
idol with dim, unreadable eyes. Razumov’s voice changed involuntarily.
“If you were to ask me where is the necessity of my hate for such as
Haldin, I would answer you--there is nothing sentimental in it. I did
not hate him because he had committed the crime of murder. Abhorrence is
not hate. I hated him simply because I am sane. It is in that character
that he outraged me. His death...”
Razumov felt his voice growing thick in his throat. The dimness of
Councillor Mikulin’s eyes seemed to spread all over his face and made it
indistinct to Razumov’s sight. He tried to disregard these phenomena.
“Indeed,” he pursued, pronouncing each word carefully, “what is his
death to me? If he were lying here on the floor I could walk over his
breast.... The fellow is a mere phantom....”
Razumov’s voice died out very much against his will. Mikulin behind the
table did not allow himself the slightest movement. The silence lasted
for some little time before Razumov could go on again.
“He went about talking of me. Those intellectual fellows sit in each
other’s rooms and get drunk on foreign ideas in the same way young
Guards’ officers treat each other with foreign wines. Merest debauchery.
...Upon my Word,”--Razumov, enraged by a sudden recollection of
Ziemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,--“upon my word, we Russians are
a drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselves
wild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a log or
set fire to the house. What is a sober man to do, I should like to know?
To cut oneself entirely from one’s kind is impossible. To live in
a desert one must be a saint. But if a drunken man runs out of the
grog-shop, falls on your neck and kisses you on both cheeks because
something about your appearance has taken his fancy, what then--kindly
tell me? You may break, perhaps, a cudgel on his back and yet not
succeed in beating him off....”
Councillor Mikulin raised his hand and passed it down his face
deliberately.
“That’s... of course,” he said in an undertone.
The quiet gravity of that gesture made Razumov pause. It was so
unexpected, too. What did it mean? It had an alarming aloofness. Razumov
remembered his intention of making him show his hand.
“I have said all this to Prince K---,” he began with assumed
indifference, but lost it on seeing Councillor Mikulin’s slow nod of
assent. “You know it? You’ve heard.... Then why should I be called
here to be told of Haldin’s execution? Did you want to confront me with
his silence now that the man is dead? What is his silence to me! This is
incomprehensible. You want in some way to shake my moral balance.”
“No. Not that,” murmured Councillor Mikulin, just audibly. “The service
you have rendered is appreciated....”
“Is it?” interrupted Razumov ironically.
“...and your position too.” Councillor Mikulin did not raise his
voice. “But only think! You fall into Prince K---‘s study as if from
the sky with your startling information.... You are studying yet,
Mr. Razumov, but we are serving already--don’t forget that.... And
naturally some curiosity was bound to....”
Councillor Mikulin looked down his beard. Razumov’s lips trembled.
“An occurrence of that sort marks a man,” the homely murmur went on. “I
admit I was curious to see you. General T--- thought it would be useful,
too.... Don’t think I am incapable of understanding your sentiments.
When I was young like you I studied....”
“Yes--you wished to see me,” said Razumov in a tone of profound
distaste. “Naturally you have the right--I mean the power. It all
amounts to the same thing. But it is perfectly useless, if you were
to look at me and listen to me for a year. I begin to think there
is something about me which people don’t seem able to make out. It’s
unfortunate. I imagine, however, that Prince K--- understands. He seemed
to.”
Councillor Mikulin moved slightly and spoke.
“Prince K--- is aware of everything that is being done, and I don’t
mind informing you that he approved my intention of becoming personally
acquainted with you.”
Razumov concealed an immense disappointment under the accents of railing
surprise.
“So he is curious too!... Well--after all, Prince K--- knows me very
little. It is really very unfortunate for me, but--it is not exactly my
fault.”
Councillor Mikulin raised a hasty deprecatory hand and inclined his head
slightly over his shoulder.
“Now, Mr. Razumov--is it necessary to take it in that way? Everybody I
am sure can....”
He glanced rapidly down his beard, and when he looked up again there
was for a moment an interested expression in his misty gaze. Razumov
discouraged it with a cold, repellent smile.
“No. That’s of no importance to be sure--except that in respect of all
this curiosity being aroused by a very simple matter.... What is to
be done with it? It is unappeasable. I mean to say there is nothing to
appease it with. I happen to have been born a Russian with patriotic
instincts--whether inherited or not I am not in a position to say.”
Razumov spoke consciously with elaborate steadiness.
“Yes, patriotic instincts developed by a faculty of independent
thinking--of detached thinking. In that respect I am more free than any
social democratic revolution could make me. It is more than probable
that I don’t think exactly as you are thinking. Indeed, how could it be?
You would think most likely at this moment that I am elaborately lying
to cover up the track of my repentance.”
Razumov stopped. His heart had grown too big for his breast. Councillor
Mikulin did not flinch.
“Why so?” he said simply. “I assisted personally at the search of your
rooms. I looked through all the papers myself. I have been greatly
impressed by a sort of political confession of faith. A very remarkable
document. Now may I ask for what purpose....”
“To deceive the police naturally,” said Razumov savagely.... “What is
all this mockery? Of course you can send me straight from this room
to Siberia. That would be intelligible. To what is intelligible I can
submit. But I protest against this comedy of persecution. The whole
affair is becoming too comical altogether for my taste. A comedy of
errors, phantoms, and suspicions. It’s positively indecent....”
Councillor Mikulin turned an attentive ear. “Did you say phantoms?” he
murmured.
“I could walk over dozens of them.” Razumov, with an impatient wave of
his hand, went on headlong, “But, really, I must claim the right to be
done once for all with that man. And in order to accomplish this I shall
take the liberty....”
Razumov on his side of the table bowed slightly to the seated
bureaucrat.
“... To retire--simply to retire,” he finished with great resolution.
He walked to the door, thinking, “Now he must show his hand. He must
ring and have me arrested before I am out of the building, or he must
let me go. And either way....”