I
That I should, at the beginning of this retrospect, mention again that
Mr. Razumov’s youth had no one in the world, as literally no one as it
can be honestly affirmed of any human being, is but a statement of fact
from a man who believes in the psychological value of facts. There
is also, perhaps, a desire of punctilious fairness. Unidentified with
anyone in this narrative where the aspects of honour and shame are
remote from the ideas of the Western world, and taking my stand on the
ground of common humanity, it is for that very reason that I feel a
strange reluctance to state baldly here what every reader has most
likely already discovered himself. Such reluctance may appear absurd if
it were not for the thought that because of the imperfection of language
there is always something ungracious (and even disgraceful) in the
exhibition of naked truth. But the time has come when Councillor of
State Mikulin can no longer be ignored. His simple question “Where to?”
on which we left Mr. Razumov in St. Petersburg, throws a light on the
general meaning of this individual case.
“Where to?” was the answer in the form of a gentle question to what we
may call Mr. Razumov’s declaration of independence. The question was not
menacing in the least and, indeed, had the ring of innocent inquiry.
Had it been taken in a merely topographical sense, the only answer to it
would have appeared sufficiently appalling to Mr Razumov. Where to? Back
to his rooms, where the Revolution had sought him out to put to a sudden
test his dormant instincts, his half-conscious thoughts and almost
wholly unconscious ambitions, by the touch as of some furious and
dogmatic religion, with its call to frantic sacrifices, its tender
resignations, its dreams and hopes uplifting the soul by the side of the
most sombre moods of despair. And Mr. Razumov had let go the door-handle
and had come back to the middle of the room, asking Councillor Mikulin
angrily, “What do you mean by it?”
As far as I can tell, Councillor Mikulin did not answer that question.
He drew Mr. Razumov into familiar conversation. It is the peculiarity of
Russian natures that, however strongly engaged in the drama of action,
they are still turning their ear to the murmur of abstract ideas. This
conversation (and others later on) need not be recorded. Suffice it to
say that it brought Mr. Razumov as we know him to the test of another
faith. There was nothing official in its expression, and Mr. Razumov was
led to defend his attitude of detachment. But Councillor Mikulin would
have none of his arguments. “For a man like you,” were his last weighty
words in the discussion, “such a position is impossible. Don’t forget
that I have seen that interesting piece of paper. I understand your
liberalism. I have an intellect of that kind myself. Reform for me is
mainly a question of method. But the principle of revolt is a physical
intoxication, a sort of hysteria which must be kept away from the
masses. You agree to this without reserve, don’t you? Because, you see,
Kirylo Sidorovitch, abstention, reserve, in certain situations, come
very near to political crime. The ancient Greeks understood that very
well.”
Mr. Razumov, listening with a faint smile, asked Councillor Mikulin
point-blank if this meant that he was going to have him watched.
The high official took no offence at the cynical inquiry.
“No, Kirylo Sidorovitch,” he answered gravely. “I don’t mean to have you
watched.”
Razumov, suspecting a lie, affected yet the greatest liberty of mind
during the short remainder of that interview. The older man expressed
himself throughout in familiar terms, and with a sort of shrewd
simplicity. Razumov concluded that to get to the bottom of that mind was
an impossible feat. A great disquiet made his heart beat quicker. The
high official, issuing from behind the desk, was actually offering to
shake hands with him.
“Good-bye, Mr Razumov. An understanding between intelligent men is
always a satisfactory occurrence. Is it not? And, of course, these rebel
gentlemen have not the monopoly of intelligence.”
“I presume that I shall not be wanted any more?” Razumov brought out
that question while his hand was still being grasped. Councillor Mikulin
released it slowly.
“That, Mr. Razumov,” he said with great earnestness, “is as it may
be. God alone knows the future. But you may rest assured that I
never thought of having you watched. You are a young man of great
independence. Yes. You are going away free as air, but you shall end by
coming back to us.”
“I! I!” Razumov exclaimed in an appalled murmur of protest. “What for?”
he added feebly.
“Yes! You yourself, Kirylo Sidorovitch,” the high police functionary
insisted in a low, severe tone of conviction. “You shall be coming back
to us. Some of our greatest minds had to do that in the end.”
“You have no better friend than Prince K---, and as to myself it is a
long time now since I’ve been honoured by his....”
He glanced down his beard.
“I won’t detain you any longer. We live in difficult times, in times
of monstrous chimeras and evil dreams and criminal follies. We shall
certainly meet once more. It may be some little time, though, before
we do. Till then may Heaven send you fruitful reflections!” Once in the
street, Razumov started off rapidly, without caring for the direction.
At first he thought of nothing; but in a little while the consciousness
of his position presented itself to him as something so ugly, dangerous,
and absurd, the difficulty of ever freeing himself from the toils of
that complication so insoluble, that the idea of going back and, as he
termed it to himself, confessing to Councillor Mikulin flashed through
his mind.
Go back! What for? Confess! To what? “I have been speaking to him with
the greatest openness,” he said to himself with perfect truth. “What
else could I tell him? That I have undertaken to carry a message to that
brute Ziemianitch? Establish a false complicity and destroy what chance
of safety I have won for nothing--what folly!”
Yet he could not defend himself from fancying that Councillor Mikulin
was, perhaps, the only man in the world able to understand his conduct.
To be understood appeared extremely fascinating.
On the way home he had to stop several times; all his strength seemed to
run out of his limbs; and in the movement of the busy streets, isolated
as if in a desert, he remained suddenly motionless for a minute or so
before he could proceed on his way. He reached his rooms at last.
Then came an illness, something in the nature of a low fever, which all
at once removed him to a great distance from the perplexing actualities,
from his very room, even. He never lost consciousness; he only seemed to
himself to be existing languidly somewhere very far away from everything
that had ever happened to him. He came out of this state slowly, with an
effect, that is to say, of extreme slowness, though the actual number
of days was not very great. And when he had got back into the middle of
things they were all changed, subtly and provokingly in their nature:
inanimate objects, human faces, the landlady, the rustic servant-girl,
the staircase, the streets, the very air. He tackled these changed
conditions in a spirit of severity. He walked to and fro to the
University, ascended stairs, paced the passages, listened to lectures,
took notes, crossed courtyards in angry aloofness, his teeth set hard
till his jaws ached.
He was perfectly aware of madcap Kostia gazing like a young retriever
from a distance, of the famished student with the red drooping nose,
keeping scrupulously away as desired; of twenty others, perhaps, he
knew well enough to speak to. And they all had an air of curiosity and
concern as if they expected something to happen. “This can’t last much
longer,” thought Razumov more than once. On certain days he was afraid
that anyone addressing him suddenly in a certain way would make him
scream out insanely a lot of filthy abuse. Often, after returning home,
he would drop into a chair in his cap and cloak and remain still for
hours holding some book he had got from the library in his hand; or
he would pick up the little penknife and sit there scraping his nails
endlessly and feeling furious all the time--simply furious. “This is
impossible,” he would mutter suddenly to the empty room.
Fact to be noted: this room might conceivably have become physically
repugnant to him, emotionally intolerable, morally uninhabitable.
But no. Nothing of the sort (and he had himself dreaded it at first),
nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, he liked his lodgings
better than any other shelter he, who had never known a home, had ever
hired before. He liked his lodgings so well that often, on that very
account, he found a certain difficulty in making up his mind to go out.
It resembled a physical seduction such as, for instance, makes a man
reluctant to leave the neighbourhood of a fire on a cold day.
For as, at that time, he seldom stirred except to go to the University
(what else was there to do?) it followed that whenever he went abroad he
felt himself at once closely involved in the moral consequences of his
act. It was there that the dark prestige of the Haldin mystery fell on
him, clung to him like a poisoned robe it was impossible to fling off.
He suffered from it exceedingly, as well as from the conversational,
commonplace, unavoidable intercourse with the other kind of students.
“They must be wondering at the change in me,” he reflected anxiously. He
had an uneasy recollection of having savagely told one or two innocent,
nice enough fellows to go to the devil. Once a married professor he used
to call upon formerly addressed him in passing: “How is it we never see
you at our Wednesdays now, Kirylo Sidorovitch?” Razumov was conscious of
meeting this advance with odious, muttering boorishness. The professor
was obviously too astonished to be offended. All this was bad. And all
this was Haldin, always Haldin--nothing but Haldin--everywhere Haldin:
a moral spectre infinitely more effective than any visible apparition of
the dead. It was only the room through which that man had blundered on
his way from crime to death that his spectre did not seem to be able to
haunt. Not, to be exact, that he was ever completely absent from it,
but that there he had no sort of power. There it was Razumov who had
the upper hand, in a composed sense of his own superiority. A vanquished
phantom--nothing more. Often in the evening, his repaired watch faintly
ticking on the table by the side of the lighted lamp, Razumov would
look up from his writing and stare at the bed with an expectant,
dispassionate attention. Nothing was to be seen there. He never really
supposed that anything ever could be seen there. After a while he would
shrug his shoulders slightly and bend again over his work. For he had
gone to work and, at first, with some success. His unwillingness to
leave that place where he was safe from Haldin grew so strong that at
last he ceased to go out at all. From early morning till far into the
night he wrote, he wrote for nearly a week; never looking at the time,
and only throwing himself on the bed when he could keep his eyes open
no longer. Then, one afternoon, quite casually, he happened to glance at
his watch. He laid down his pen slowly.
“At this very hour,” was his thought, “the fellow stole unseen into this
room while I was out. And there he sat quiet as a mouse--perhaps in
this very chair.” Razumov got up and began to pace the floor steadily,
glancing at the watch now and then. “This is the time when I returned
and found him standing against the stove,” he observed to himself. When
it grew dark he lit his lamp. Later on he interrupted his tramping once
more, only to wave away angrily the girl who attempted to enter the
room with tea and something to eat on a tray. And presently he noted the
watch pointing at the hour of his own going forth into the falling snow
on that terrible errand.
“Complicity,” he muttered faintly, and resumed his pacing, keeping his
eye on the hands as they crept on slowly to the time of his return.
“And, after all,” he thought suddenly, “I might have been the chosen
instrument of Providence. This is a manner of speaking, but there may be
truth in every manner of speaking. What if that absurd saying were true
in its essence?”
He meditated for a while, then sat down, his legs stretched out, with
stony eyes, and with his arms hanging down on each side of the chair
like a man totally abandoned by Providence--desolate.
He noted the time of Haldin’s departure and continued to sit still for
another half-hour; then muttering, “And now to work,” drew up to the
table, seized the pen and instantly dropped it under the influence of a
profoundly disquieting reflection: “There’s three weeks gone by and no
word from Mikulin.”
What did it mean! Was he forgotten? Possibly. Then why not remain
forgotten--creep in somewhere? Hide. But where? How? With whom? In what
hole? And was it to be for ever, or what?
But a retreat was big with shadowy dangers. The eye of the social
revolution was on him, and Razumov for a moment felt an unnamed and
despairing dread, mingled with an odious sense of humiliation. Was it
possible that he no longer belonged to himself? This was damnable.
But why not simply keep on as before? Study. Advance. Work hard as if
nothing had happened (and first of all win the Silver Medal), acquire
distinction, become a great reforming servant of the greatest of States.
Servant, too, of the mightiest homogeneous mass of mankind with a
capability for logical, guided development in a brotherly solidarity
of force and aim such as the world had never dreamt of... the Russian
nation!
Calm, resolved, steady in his great purpose, he was stretching his hand
towards the pen when he happened to glance towards the bed. He rushed at
it, enraged, with a mental scream: “it’s you, crazy fanatic, who stands
in the way!” He flung the pillow on the floor violently, tore the
blankets aside.... Nothing there. And, turning away, he caught for
an instant in the air, like a vivid detail in a dissolving view of two
heads, the eyes of General T--- and of Privy-Councillor Mikulin side
by side fixed upon him, quite different in character, but with the same
unflinching and weary and yet purposeful expression...servants of the
nation!
Razumov tottered to the washstand very alarmed about himself, drank some
water and bathed his forehead. “This will pass and leave no trace,” he
thought confidently. “I am all right.” But as to supposing that he had
been forgotten it was perfect nonsense. He was a marked man on that
side. And that was nothing. It was what that miserable phantom stood for
which had to be got out of the way.... “If one only could go and spit
it all out at some of them--and take the consequences.”
He imagined himself accosting the red-nosed student and suddenly shaking
his fist in his face. “From that one, though,” he reflected, “there’s
nothing to be got, because he has no mind of his own. He’s living in
a red democratic trance. Ah! you want to smash your way into universal
happiness, my boy. I will give you universal happiness, you silly,
hypnotized ghoul, you! And what about my own happiness, eh? Haven’t I
got any right to it, just because I can think for myself?...”
And again, but with a different mental accent, Razumov said to himself,
“I am young. Everything can be lived down.” At that moment he was
crossing the room slowly, intending to sit down on the sofa and try to
compose his thoughts. But before he had got so far everything abandoned
him--hope, courage, belief in himself trust in men. His heart had, as it
were, suddenly emptied itself. It was no use struggling on. Rest, work,
solitude, and the frankness of intercourse with his kind were alike
forbidden to him. Everything was gone. His existence was a great cold
blank, something like the enormous plain of the whole of Russia levelled
with snow and fading gradually on all sides into shadows and mists.
He sat down, with swimming head, closed his eyes, and remained like
that, sitting bolt upright on the sofa and perfectly awake for the
rest of the night; till the girl bustling into the outer room with
the samovar thumped with her fist on the door, calling out, “Kirylo
Sidorovitch, please! It is time for you to get up!”
Then, pale like a corpse obeying the dread summons of judgement, Razumov
opened his eyes and got up.
Nobody will be surprised to hear, I suppose, that when the summons came
he went to see Councillor Mikulin. It came that very morning, while,
looking white and shaky, like an invalid just out of bed, he was trying
to shave himself. The envelope was addressed in the little attorney’s
handwriting. That envelope contained another, superscribed to Razumov,
in Prince K---‘s hand, with the request “Please forward under cover
at once” in a corner. The note inside was an autograph of Councillor
Mikulin. The writer stated candidly that nothing had arisen which needed
clearing up, but nevertheless appointed a meeting with Mr. Razumov at a
certain address in town which seemed to be that of an oculist.
Razumov read it, finished shaving, dressed, looked at the note again,
and muttered gloomily, “Oculist.” He pondered over it for a time, lit
a match, and burned the two envelopes and the enclosure carefully.
Afterwards he waited, sitting perfectly idle and not even looking at
anything in particular till the appointed hour drew near--and then went
out.
Whether, looking at the unofficial character of the summons, he might
have refrained from attending to it is hard to say. Probably not. At any
rate, he went; but, what’s more, he went with a certain eagerness, which
may appear incredible till it is remembered that Councillor Mikulin was
the only person on earth with whom Razumov could talk, taking the Haldin
adventure for granted. And Haldin, when once taken for granted, was no
longer a haunting, falsehood-breeding spectre. Whatever troubling power
he exercised in all the other places of the earth, Razumov knew very
well that at this oculist’s address he would be merely the hanged
murderer of M. de P--- and nothing more. For the dead can live only
with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by
the living. So Mr. Razumov, certain of relief, went to meet Councillor
Mikulin with the eagerness of a pursued person welcoming any sort of
shelter.
This much said, there is no need to tell anything more of that first
interview and of the several others. To the morality of a Western reader
an account of these meetings would wear perhaps the sinister character
of old legendary tales where the Enemy of Mankind is represented holding
subtly mendacious dialogues with some tempted soul. It is not my part to
protest. Let me but remark that the Evil One, with his single passion
of satanic pride for the only motive, is yet, on a larger, modern view,
allowed to be not quite so black as he used to be painted. With what
greater latitude, then, should we appraise the exact shade of mere
mortal man, with his many passions and his miserable ingenuity in error,
always dazzled by the base glitter of mixed motives, everlastingly
betrayed by a short-sighted wisdom.
Councillor Mikulin was one of those powerful officials who, in a
position not obscure, not occult, but simply inconspicuous, exercise
a great influence over the methods rather than over the conduct of
affairs. A devotion to Church and Throne is not in itself a criminal
sentiment; to prefer the will of one to the will of many does not argue
the possession of a black heart or prove congenital idiocy. Councillor
Mikulin was not only a clever but also a faithful official. Privately he
was a bachelor with a love of comfort, living alone in an apartment of
five rooms luxuriously furnished; and was known by his intimates to be
an enlightened patron of the art of female dancing. Later on the larger
world first heard of him in the very hour of his downfall, during one of
those State trials which astonish and puzzle the average plain man who
reads the newspapers, by a glimpse of unsuspected intrigues. And in
the stir of vaguely seen monstrosities, in that momentary, mysterious
disturbance of muddy waters, Councillor Mikulin went under, dignified,
with only a calm, emphatic protest of his innocence--nothing more. No
disclosures damaging to a harassed autocracy, complete fidelity to the
secrets of the miserable _arcana imperii_ deposited in his patriotic
breast, a display of bureaucratic stoicism in a Russian official’s
ineradicable, almost sublime contempt for truth; stoicism of silence
understood only by the very few of the initiated, and not without a
certain cynical grandeur of self-sacrifice on the part of a sybarite.
For the terribly heavy sentence turned Councillor Mikulin civilly into a
corpse, and actually into something very much like a common convict.
It seems that the savage autocracy, no more than the divine democracy,
does not limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It
devours its friends and servants as well. The downfall of His Excellency
Gregory Gregorievitch Mikulin (which did not occur till some years
later) completes all that is known of the man. But at the time of M. de
P---‘s murder (or execution) Councillor Mikulin, under the modest style
of Head of Department at the General Secretariat, exercised a wide
influence as the confidant and right-hand man of his former schoolfellow
and lifelong friend, General T---. One can imagine them talking over the
case of Mr. Razumov, with the full sense of their unbounded power
over all the lives in Russia, with cursory disdain, like two Olympians
glancing at a worm. The relationship with Prince K--- was enough to save
Razumov from some carelessly arbitrary proceeding, and it is also very
probable that after the interview at the Secretariat he would have been
left alone. Councillor Mikulin would not have forgotten him (he forgot
no one who ever fell under his observation), but would have simply
dropped him for ever. Councillor Mikulin was a good-natured man and
wished no harm to anyone. Besides (with his own reforming tendencies) he
was favourably impressed by that young student, the son of Prince K---,
and apparently no fool.
But as fate would have it, while Mr. Razumov was finding that no way of
life was possible to him, Councillor Mikulin’s discreet abilities were
rewarded by a very responsible post--nothing less than the direction of
the general police supervision over Europe. And it was then, and then
only, when taking in hand the perfecting of the service which watches
the revolutionist activities abroad, that he thought again of Mr.
Razumov. He saw great possibilities of special usefulness in that
uncommon young man on whom he had a hold already, with his peculiar
temperament, his unsettled mind and shaken conscience, a struggling in
the toils of a false position.... It was as if the revolutionists
themselves had put into his hand that tool so much finer than the common
base instruments, so perfectly fitted, if only vested with sufficient
credit, to penetrate into places inaccessible to common informers.
Providential! Providential! And Prince K---, taken into the secret, was
ready enough to adopt that mystical view too. “It will be necessary,
though, to make a career for him afterwards,” he had stipulated
anxiously. “Oh! absolutely. We shall make that our affair,” Mikulin had
agreed. Prince K---‘s mysticism was of an artless kind; but Councillor
Mikulin was astute enough for two.
Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they
must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect
command. The power of Councillor Mikulin consisted in the ability to
seize upon that sense, that side in the men he used. It did not matter
to him what it was--vanity, despair, love, hate, greed, intelligent
pride or stupid conceit, it was all one to him as long as the man could
be made to serve. The obscure, unrelated young student Razumov, in the
moment of great moral loneliness, was allowed to feel that he was an
object of interest to a small group of people of high position. Prince
K--- was persuaded to intervene personally, and on a certain occasion
gave way to a manly emotion which, all unexpected as it was, quite upset
Mr. Razumov. The sudden embrace of that man, agitated by his loyalty to
a throne and by suppressed paternal affection, was a revelation to Mr.
Razumov of something within his own breast.
“So that was it!” he exclaimed to himself. A sort of contemptuous
tenderness softened the young man’s grim view of his position as
he reflected upon that agitated interview with Prince K---. This
simpleminded, worldly ex-Guardsman and senator whose soft grey official
whiskers had brushed against his cheek, his aristocratic and convinced
father, was he a whit less estimable or more absurd than that
famine-stricken, fanatical revolutionist, the red-nosed student?
And there was some pressure, too, besides the persuasiveness. Mr.
Razumov was always being made to feel that he had committed himself.
There was no getting away from that feeling, from that soft,
unanswerable, “Where to?” of Councillor Mikulin. But no susceptibilities
were ever hurt. It was to be a dangerous mission to Geneva for
obtaining, at a critical moment, absolutely reliable information from a
very inaccessible quarter of the inner revolutionary circle. There were
indications that a very serious plot was being matured.... The repose
indispensable to a great country was at stake.... A great scheme of
orderly reforms would be endangered.... The highest personages in the
land were patriotically uneasy, and so on. In short, Councillor Mikulin
knew what to say. This skill is to be inferred clearly from the mental
and psychological self-confession, self-analysis of Mr. Razumov’s
written journal--the pitiful resource of a young man who had near him no
trusted intimacy, no natural affection to turn to.
How all this preliminary work was concealed from observation need not
be recorded. The expedient of the oculist gives a sufficient instance.
Councillor Mikulin was resourceful, and the task not very difficult. Any
fellow-student, even the red-nosed one, was perfectly welcome to see Mr.
Razumov entering a private house to consult an oculist. Ultimate success
depended solely on the revolutionary self-delusion which credited
Razumov with a mysterious complicity in the Haldin affair. To be
compromised in it was credit enough-and it was their own doing. It was
precisely _that_ which stamped Mr. Razumov as a providential man, wide
as poles apart from the usual type of agent for “European supervision.”
And it was _that_ which the Secretariat set itself the task to foster by
a course of calculated and false indiscretions.
It came at last to this, that one evening Mr. Razumov was unexpectedly
called upon by one of the “thinking” students whom formerly, before
the Haldin affair, he used to meet at various private gatherings; a big
fellow with a quiet, unassuming manner and a pleasant voice.
Recognizing his voice raised in the ante-room, “May one come in?”
Razumov, lounging idly on his couch, jumped up. “Suppose he were coming
to stab me?” he thought sardonically, and, assuming a green shade over
his left eye, said in a severe tone, “Come in.”
The other was embarrassed; hoped he was not intruding.
“You haven’t been seen for several days, and I’ve wondered.” He coughed
a little. “Eye better?”
“Nearly well now.”
“Good. I won’t stop a minute; but you see I, that is, we--anyway, I
have undertaken the duty to warn you, Kirylo Sidorovitch, that you are
living in false security maybe.”
Razumov sat still with his head leaning on his hand, which nearly
concealed the unshaded eye.
“I have that idea, too.”
“That’s all right, then. Everything seems quiet now, but those people
are preparing some move of general repression. That’s of course. But it
isn’t that I came to tell you.” He hitched his chair closer, dropped his
voice. “You will be arrested before long--we fear.”
An obscure scribe in the Secretariat had overheard a few words of a
certain conversation, and had caught a glimpse of a certain report. This
intelligence was not to be neglected.
Razumov laughed a little, and his visitor became very anxious.
“Ah! Kirylo Sidorovitch, this is no laughing matter. They have left you
alone for a while, but...! Indeed, you had better try to leave the
country, Kirylo Sidorovitch, while there’s yet time.”
Razumov jumped up and began to thank him for the advice with mocking
effusiveness, so that the other, colouring up, took himself off with
the notion that this mysterious Razumov was not a person to be warned or
advised by inferior mortals.
Councillor Mikulin, informed the next day of the incident, expressed
his satisfaction. “H’m! Ha! Exactly what was wanted to...” and glanced
down his beard.
“I conclude,” said Razumov, “that the moment has come for me to start on
my mission.”
“The psychological Moment,” Councillor Mikulin insisted softly--very
gravely--as if awed.
All the arrangements to give verisimilitude to the appearance of a
difficult escape were made. Councillor Mikulin did not expect to see
Mr. Razumov again before his departure. These meetings were a risk, and
there was nothing more to settle.
“We have said everything to each other by now, Kirylo Sidorovitch,”
said the high official feelingly, pressing Razumov’s hand with that
unreserved heartiness a Russian can convey in his manner. “There is
nothing obscure between us. And I will tell you what! I consider myself
fortunate in having--h’m--your...”
He glanced down his beard, and, after a moment of thoughtful silence,
handed to Razumov a half-sheet of notepaper--an abbreviated note of
matters already discussed, certain points of inquiry, the line of
conduct agreed on, a few hints as to personalities, and so on. It was
the only compromising document in the case, but, as Councillor Mikulin
observed, “it could be easily destroyed. Mr. Razumov had better not see
any one now--till on the other side of the frontier, when, of course, it
will be just that.... See and hear and...”
He glanced down his beard; but when Razumov declared his intention
to see one person at least before leaving St. Petersburg, Councillor
Mikulin failed to conceal a sudden uneasiness. The young man’s studious,
solitary, and austere existence was well known to him. It was the
greatest guarantee of fitness. He became deprecatory. Had his dear
Kirylo Sidorovitch considered whether, in view of such a momentous
enterprise, it wasn’t really advisable to sacrifice every sentiment....
Razumov interrupted the remonstrance scornfully. It was not a young
woman, it was a young fool he wished to see for a certain purpose.
Councillor Mikulin was relieved, but surprised.
“Ah! And what for--precisely?”
“For the sake of improving the aspect of verisimilitude,” said Razumov
curtly, in a desire to affirm his independence. “I must be trusted in
what I do.”
Councillor Mikulin gave way tactfully, murmuring, “Oh, certainly,
certainly. Your judgment...”
And with another handshake they parted.
The fool of whom Mr. Razumov had thought was the rich and festive
student known as madcap Kostia. Feather-headed, loquacious, excitable,
one could make certain of his utter and complete indiscretion. But that
riotous youth, when reminded by Razumov of his offers of service some
time ago, passed from his usual elation into boundless dismay.
“Oh, Kirylo Sidorovitch, my dearest friend--my saviour--what shall I
do? I’ve blown last night every rouble I had from my dad the other day.
Can’t you give me till Thursday? I shall rush round to all the usurers
I know.... No, of course, you can’t! Don’t look at me like that.
What shall I do? No use asking the old man. I tell you he’s given me a
fistful of big notes three days ago. Miserable wretch that I am.”
He wrung his hands in despair. Impossible to confide in the old man.
“They” had given him a decoration, a cross on the neck only last year,
and he had been cursing the modern tendencies ever since. Just then he
would see all the intellectuals in Russia hanged in a row rather than
part with a single rouble.
“Kirylo Sidorovitch, wait a moment. Don’t despise me. I have it. I’ll,
yes--I’ll do it--I’ll break into his desk. There’s no help for it. I
know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my
way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer
really loves me. He’ll have to get over it--and I, too. Kirylo, my dear
soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening--I shall
steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why?
You’ve only to say the word.”
“Steal, by all means,” said Razumov, fixing him stonily.
“To the devil with the ten commandments!” cried the other, with the
greatest animation. “It’s the new future now.”
But when he entered Razumov’s room late in the evening it was with an
unaccustomed soberness of manner, almost solemnly.
“It’s done,” he said.
Razumov sitting bowed, his clasped hands hanging between his knees,
shuddered at the familiar sound of these words. Kostia deposited slowly
in the circle of lamplight a small brown-paper parcel tied with a piece
of string.
“As I’ve said--all I could lay my hands on. The old boy’ll think the end
of the world has come.” Razumov nodded from the couch, and contemplated
the hare-brained fellow’s gravity with a feeling of malicious pleasure.
“I’ve made my little sacrifice,” sighed mad Kostia. “And I’ve to thank
you, Kirylo Sidorovitch, for the opportunity.”
“It has cost you something?”
“Yes, it has. You see, the dear old duffer really loves me. He’ll be
hurt.”
“And you believe all they tell you of the new future and the sacred will
of the people?”
“Implicitly. I would give my life.... Only, you see, I am like a pig
at a trough. I am no good. It’s my nature.”
Razumov, lost in thought, had forgotten his existence till the
youth’s voice, entreating him to fly without loss of time, roused him
unpleasantly.
“All right. Well--good-bye.”
“I am not going to leave you till I’ve seen you out of St. Petersburg,”
declared Kostia unexpectedly, with calm determination. “You can’t refuse
me that now. For God’s sake, Kirylo, my soul, the police may be here
any moment, and when they get you they’ll immure you somewhere for
ages--till your hair turns grey. I have down there the best trotter of
dad’s stables and a light sledge. We shall do thirty miles before the
moon sets, and find some roadside station....”
Razumov looked up amazed. The journey was decided--unavoidable. He
had fixed the next day for his departure on the mission. And now he
discovered suddenly that he had not believed in it. He had gone about
listening, speaking, thinking, planning his simulated flight, with the
growing conviction that all this was preposterous. As if anybody ever
did such things! It was like a game of make-believe. And now he was
amazed! Here was somebody who believed in it with desperate earnestness.
“If I don’t go now, at once,” thought Razumov, with a start of fear, “I
shall never go.” He rose without a word, and the anxious Kostia thrust
his cap on him, helped him into his cloak, or else he would have left
the room bareheaded as he stood. He was walking out silently when a
sharp cry arrested him.
“Kirylo!”
“What?” He turned reluctantly in the doorway. Upright, with a stiffly
extended arm, Kostia, his face set and white, was pointing an eloquent
forefinger at the brown little packet lying forgotten in the circle of
bright light on the table. Razumov hesitated, came back for it under the
severe eyes of his companion, at whom he tried to smile. But the boyish,
mad youth was frowning. “It’s a dream,” thought Razumov, putting the
little parcel into his pocket and descending the stairs; “nobody does
such things.” The other held him under the arm, whispering of
dangers ahead, and of what he meant to do in certain contingencies.
“Preposterous,” murmured Razumov, as he was being tucked up in the
sledge. He gave himself up to watching the development of the dream
with extreme attention. It continued on foreseen lines, inexorably
logical--the long drive, the wait at the small station sitting by a
stove. They did not exchange half a dozen words altogether. Kostia,
gloomy himself, did not care to break the silence. At parting they
embraced twice--it had to be done; and then Kostia vanished out of the
dream.
When dawn broke, Razumov, very still in a hot, stuffy railway-car full
of bedding and of sleeping people in all its dimly lighted length, rose
quietly, lowered the glass a few inches, and flung out on the great
plain of snow a small brown-paper parcel. Then he sat down again muffled
up and motionless. “For the people,” he thought, staring out of the
window. The great white desert of frozen, hard earth glided past his
eyes without a sign of human habitation.
That had been a waking act; and then the dream had him again: Prussia,
Saxony, Wurtemberg, faces, sights, words--all a dream, observed with
an angry, compelled attention. Zurich, Geneva--still a dream, minutely
followed, wearing one into harsh laughter, to fury, to death--with the
fear of awakening at the end.