IV

I learned a great deal which I should never have expected of him.--I

was, of course, hardly surprised that as a military man, as an officer,

he was not a success, that he was in fact worse than useless; but what I

had not anticipated was that he was by no means conspicuous for much

bravery; that in battle he had a downcast, woebegone air, seemed

half-depressed, half-bewildered. Discipline of every sort worried him,

and made him miserable; he was daring to the point of insanity when only

his _own personal_ safety was in question; no bet was too mad for him to

accept; but do harm to others, kill, fight, he could not, possibly

because his heart was too good--or possibly because his ‘cottonwool’

education (so he expressed it), had made him too soft. Himself he was

quite ready to murder in any way at any moment.... But others--no.

‘There’s no making him out,’ his comrades said of him; ‘he’s a flabby

creature, a poor stick--and yet such a desperate fellow--a perfect

madman!’ I chanced in later days to ask Misha what evil spirit

drove him, forced him, to drink to excess, risk his life, and so

on. He always had one answer--‘wretchedness.’

‘But why are you wretched?’

‘Why! how can you ask? If one comes, anyway, to one’s self, begins to

feel, to think of the poverty, of the injustice, of Russia.... Well,

it’s all over with me! ... one’s so wretched at once--one wants to put a

bullet through one’s head! One’s forced to start drinking.’

‘Why ever do you drag Russia in?’

‘How can I help it? Can’t be helped! That’s why I’m afraid to think.’

‘It all comes, and your wretchedness too, from having nothing to do.’

‘But I don’t know how to do anything, uncle! dear fellow! Take one’s

life, and stake it on a card--that I can do! Come, you tell me what I

ought to do, what to risk my life for? This instant ... I’ll ...’

‘But you must simply live.... Why risk your life?’

‘I can’t! You say I act thoughtlessly.... But what else can I do? ... If

one starts thinking--good God, all that comes into one’s head! It’s only

Germans who can think! ...’

What use was it talking to him? He was a desperate man, and that’s all

one can say.

Of the Caucasus legends I have spoken about, I will tell you two or

three. One day, in a party of officers, Misha began boasting of a sabre

he had got by exchange--‘a genuine Persian blade!’ The officers

expressed doubts as to its genuineness. Misha began disputing. ‘Here

then,’ he cried at last; ‘they say the man that knows most about sabres

is Abdulka the one-eyed. I’ll go to him, and ask.’ The officers

wondered. ‘What Abdulka? Do you mean that lives in the mountains? The

rebel never subdued? Abdul-khan?’ ‘Yes, that’s him.’ ‘Why, but he’ll

take you for a spy, will put you in a hole full of bugs, or else cut

your head off with your own sabre. And, besides, how are you going to

get to him? They’ll catch you directly.’ ‘I’ll go to him, though, all

the same.’ ‘Bet you won’t!’ ‘Taken!’ And Misha promptly saddled his

horse and rode off to Abdulka. He disappeared for three days. All felt

certain that the crazy fellow had come by his end. But, behold! he came

back--drunk, and with a sabre, not the one he had taken, but another.

They began questioning him. ‘It was all right,’ said he; ‘Abdulka’s a

nice fellow. At first, it’s true, he ordered them to put irons on my

legs, and was even on the point of having me impaled. Only, I explained

why I had come, and showed him the sabre. “And you’d better not keep

me,” said I; “don’t expect a ransom for me; I’ve not a farthing to bless

myself with--and I’ve no relations.” Abdulka was surprised; he looked at

me with his solitary eye. “Well,” said he, “you are a bold one, you

Russian; am I to believe you?” “You may believe me,” said I; “I never

tell a lie.” (And this was true; Misha never lied.) Abdulka looked at me

again. “And do you know how to drink wine?” “I do,” said I; “give me as

much as you will, I’ll drink it.” Abdulka was surprised again; he called

on Allah. And he told his--daughter, I suppose--such a pretty creature,

only with an eye like a jackal’s--to bring a wine-skin. And I began to

get to work on it. “But your sabre,” said he, “isn’t genuine; here, take

the real thing. And now we are pledged friends.” But you’ve lost your

bet, gentlemen; pay up.’

The second legend of Misha is of this nature. He was passionately fond

of cards; but as he had no money, and could never pay his debts at cards

(though he was never a card-sharper), no one at last would sit down to a

game with him. So one day he began urgently begging one of his comrades

among the officers to play with him! ‘But if you lose, you don’t pay.’

‘The money certainly I can’t pay, but I’ll put a shot through my left

hand, see, with this pistol here!’ ‘But whatever use will that be to

me?’ ‘No use, but still it will be curious.’ This conversation took

place after a drinking bout in the presence of witnesses. Whether it was

that Misha’s proposition struck the officer as really curious--anyway he

agreed. Cards were brought, the game began. Misha was in luck; he won a

hundred roubles. And thereupon his opponent struck his forehead with

vexation. ‘What an ass I am!’ he cried, ‘to be taken in like this! As if

you’d have shot your hand if you had lost!--a likely story! hold out

your purse!’ ‘That’s a lie,’ retorted Misha: ‘I’ve won--but I’ll shoot

my hand.’ He snatched up his pistol--and bang, fired at his own hand.

The bullet passed right through it ... and in a week the wound had

completely healed.

Another time, Misha was riding with his comrades along a road at

night ... and they saw close to the roadside a narrow ravine like a deep

cleft, dark--so dark you couldn’t see the bottom. ‘Look,’ said one of

the officers, ‘Misha may be a desperate fellow, but he wouldn’t leap

into that ravine.’ ‘Yes, I’d leap in!’ ‘No, you wouldn’t, for I dare say

it’s seventy feet deep, and you might break your neck.’ His friend knew

his weak point--vanity.... There was a great deal of it in Misha. ‘But

I’ll leap in anyway! Would you like to bet on it? Ten roubles.’ ‘Good!’

And the officer had hardly uttered the word, when Misha and his horse

were off--into the ravine--and crashing down over the stones. All were

simply petrified.... A full minute passed, and they heard Misha’s voice,

dimly, as it were rising up out of the bowels of the earth: ‘All right!

fell on the sand ... but it was a long flight! Ten roubles you’ve lost!’

‘Climb out!’ shouted his comrades. ‘Climb out, I dare say!’ echoed

Misha. ‘A likely story! I should like to see you climb out. You’ll have

to go for torches and ropes now. And, meanwhile, to keep up my spirits

while I wait, fling down a flask....’

And so Misha had to stay five hours at the bottom of the ravine; and

when they dragged him out, it turned out that his shoulder was

dislocated. But that in no way troubled him. The next day a bone-setter,

one of the black-smiths, set his shoulder, and he used it as though

nothing had been the matter.

His health in general was marvellous, incredible. I have already

mentioned that up to the time of his death he kept his almost childishly

fresh complexion. Illness was a thing unknown to him, in spite of his

excesses; the strength of his constitution never once showed signs of

giving way. When any other man would infallibly have been seriously ill,

or even have died, he merely shook himself, like a duck in the water,

and was more blooming than ever. Once, also in the Caucasus ... _this_

legend is really incredible, but one may judge from it what Misha was

thought to be capable of.... Well, once, in the Caucasus, in a state of

drunkenness, he fell down with the lower half of his body in a stream of

water; his head and arms were on the bank, out of water. It was

winter-time, there was a hard frost, and when he was found next morning,

his legs and body were pulled out from under a thick layer of ice, which

had formed over them in the night--and he didn’t even catch cold!

Another time--this was in Russia (near Orel, and also in a time of

severe frost)--he was in a tavern outside the town in company with seven

young seminarists (or theological students), and these seminarists were

celebrating their final examination, but had invited Misha, as a

delightful person, a man of ‘inspiration,’ as the phrase was then. A

very great deal was drunk, and when at last the festive party got ready

to depart, Misha, dead drunk, was in an unconscious condition. All the

seven seminarists together had but one three-horse sledge with a high

back; where were they to stow the unresisting body? Then one of the

young men, inspired by classical reminiscences, proposed tying Misha by

his feet to the back of the sledge, as Hector was tied to the chariot of

Achilles! The proposal met with approval ... and jolting up and down

over the holes, sliding sideways down the slopes, with his legs torn and

flayed, and his head rolling in the snow, poor Misha travelled on his

back for the mile and a half from the tavern to the town, and hadn’t as

much as a cough afterwards, hadn’t turned a hair! Such heroic health had

nature bestowed upon him!

V

From the Caucasus he came again to Moscow, in a Circassian dress, a

dagger in his sash, a high-peaked cap on his head. This costume he

retained to the end, though he was no longer in the army, from which he

had been discharged for outstaying his leave. He stayed with me,

borrowed a little money ... and forthwith began his ‘plunges,’ his

wanderings, or, as he expressed it, ‘his peregrinations from pillar to

post,’ then came the sudden disappearances and returns, and the showers

of beautifully written letters addressed to people of every possible

description, from an archbishop down to stable-boys and mid-wives! Then

came calls upon persons known and unknown! And this is worth noticing:

when he made these calls, he was never abject and cringing, he never

worried people by begging, but on the contrary behaved with propriety,

and had positively a cheerful and pleasant air, though the inveterate

smell of spirits accompanied him everywhere, and his Oriental costume

gradually changed into rags. ‘Give, and God will reward you, though I

don’t deserve it,’ he would say, with a bright smile and a candid blush;

‘if you don’t give, you’ll be perfectly right, and I shan’t blame you

for it. I shall find food to eat, God will provide! And there are people

poorer than I, and much more deserving of help--plenty, plenty!’ Misha

was particularly successful with women: he knew how to appeal to their

sympathy. But don’t suppose that he was or fancied himself a

Lovelace....Oh, no! in that way he was very modest. Whether it was that

he had inherited a cool temperament from his parents, or whether indeed

this too is to be set down to his dislike for doing any one harm--as,

according to his notions, relations with a woman meant inevitably doing

a woman harm--I won’t undertake to decide; only in all his behaviour

with the fair sex he was extremely delicate. Women felt this, and were

the more ready to sympathise with him and help him, until at last he

revolted them by his drunkenness and debauchery, by the desperateness of

which I have spoken already.... I can think of no other word for it.

But in other relations he had by that time lost every sort of delicacy,

and was gradually sinking to the lowest depths of degradation. He once,

in the public assembly at T----, got as far as setting on the table a

jug with a notice: ‘Any one, to whom it may seem agreeable to give the

high-born nobleman Poltyev (authentic documents in proof of his

pedigree are herewith exposed) a flip on the nose, may satisfy this

inclination on putting a rouble into this jug.’ And I am told there

were persons found willing to pay for the privilege of flipping a

nobleman’s nose! It is true that one such person, who put in only one

rouble and gave him _two_ flips, he first almost strangled, and then

forced to apologise; it is true, too, that part of the money gained in

this fashion he promptly distributed among other poor devils ... but

still, think what a disgrace!

In the course of his ‘peregrinations from pillar to post,’ he made his

way, too, to his ancestral home, which he had sold for next to nothing

to a speculator and money-lender well known in those days. The

money-lender was at home, and hearing of the presence in the

neighbourhood of the former owner, now reduced to vagrancy, he gave

orders not to admit him into the house, and even, in case of necessity,

to drive him away. Misha announced that he would not for his part

consent to enter the house, polluted by the presence of so repulsive a

person; that he would permit no one to drive him away, but was going to

the churchyard to pay his devotions at the grave of his parents. So in

fact he did.

In the churchyard he was joined by an old house-serf, who had once been

his nurse. The money-lender had deprived this old man of his monthly

allowance, and driven him off the estate; since then his refuge had been

a corner in a peasant’s hut. Misha had been too short a time in

possession of his estate to have left behind him a particularly

favourable memory; still the old servant could not resist running to the

churchyard as soon as he heard of his young master’s being there. He

found Misha sitting on the ground between the tombstones, asked for his

hand to kiss, as in old times, and even shed tears on seeing the rags

which clothed the limbs of his once pampered young charge.

Misha gazed long and silently at the old man. ‘Timofay!’ he said at

last; Timofay started.

‘What do you desire?’

‘Have you a spade?’

‘I can get one.... But what do you want with a spade, Mihailo

Andreitch, sir?’

‘I want to dig myself a grave, Timofay, and to lie here for time

everlasting between my father and mother. There’s only this spot left me

in the world. Get a spade!’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Timofay; he went and got it. And Misha began at once

digging in the ground, while Timofay stood by, his chin propped in his

hand, repeating: ‘It’s all that’s left for you and me, master!’

Misha dug and dug, from time to time observing: ‘Life’s not worth

living, is it, Timofay?’

‘It’s not indeed, master.’

The hole was already of a good depth. People saw what Misha was about,

and ran to tell the new owner about it. The money-lender was at first

very angry, wanted to send for the police: ‘This is sacrilege,’ said he.

But afterwards, probably reflecting that it was inconvenient anyway to

have to do with such a madman, and that it might lead to a scandal,--he

went in his own person to the churchyard, and approaching Misha, still

toiling, made him a polite bow. He went on with his digging as though he

had not noticed his successor. ‘Mihail Andreitch,’ began the

money-lender, ‘allow me to ask what you are doing here?’

‘You can see--I am digging myself a grave.’

‘Why are you doing so?’

‘Because I don’t want to live any longer.’

The money-lender fairly threw up his hands in amazement. ‘You don’t

want to live?’

Misha glanced menacingly at the money-lender. ‘That surprises you?

Aren’t you the cause of it all? ... You? ... You? ... Wasn’t it you,

Judas, who robbed me, taking advantage of my childishness? Aren’t you

flaying the peasants’ skins off their backs? Haven’t you taken from

this poor old man his crust of dry bread? Wasn’t it you? ... O God!

everywhere nothing but injustice, and oppression, and evil-doing....

Everything must go to ruin then, and me too! I don’t care for life, I

don’t care for life in Russia!’ And the spade moved faster than ever in

Misha’s hands.

‘Here’s a devil of a business!’ thought the money-lender; ‘he’s

positively burying himself alive.’ ‘Mihail Andreevitch,’ he began

again: ‘listen. I’ve been behaving badly to you, indeed; they told me

falsely of you.’

Misha went on digging.

‘But why be desperate?’

Misha still went on digging, and kept throwing the earth at the

money-lender’s feet, as though to say, ‘Here you are, land-grabber.’

‘Really, you ‘re wrong in this. Won’t you be pleased to come in to have

some lunch, and rest a bit?’

Misha raised his head. ‘So that’s it now! And anything to drink?’

The money-lender was delighted. ‘Why, of course ... I should think so.’

‘You invite Timofay too?’

‘Well, ... yes, him too.’

Misha pondered. ‘Only, mind ... you made me a beggar, you know.... Don’t

think you can get off with one bottle!’

‘Set your mind at rest ... there shall be all you can want.’

Misha got up and flung down the spade.... ‘Well, Timosha,’ said he to

his old nurse; ‘let’s do honour to our host.... Come along.’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered the old man.

And all three started off to the house together. The money-lender knew

the man he had to deal with. At the first start Misha, it is true,

exacted a promise from him to ‘grant all sorts of immunities’ to the

peasants; but an hour later, this same Misha, together with Timofay,

both drunk, were dancing a galop in the big apartments, which still

seemed pervaded by the God-fearing shade of Andrei Nikolaevitch; and an

hour later still, Misha in a dead sleep (he had a very weak head for

spirits), laid in a cart with his high cap and dagger, was being driven

off to the town, more than twenty miles away, and there was flung under

a hedge.... As for Timofay, who could still keep on his legs, and only

hiccupped--him, of course, they kicked out of the house; since they

couldn’t get at the master, they had to be content with the old servant.