“What does she want?”
“Gnekker was secretly married to Liza yesterday. Return.”
I read the telegram, and my dismay does not last long. I am dismayed,
not by what Liza and Gnekker have done, but by the indifference with
which I hear of their marriage. They say philosophers and the truly wise
are indifferent. It is false: indifference is the paralysis of the soul;
it is premature death.
I go to bed again, and begin trying to think of something to occupy my
mind. What am I to think about? I feel as though everything had been
thought over already and there is nothing which could hold my attention
now.
When daylight comes I sit up in bed with my arms round my knees, and
to pass the time I try to know myself. “Know thyself” is excellent and
useful advice; it is only a pity that the ancients never thought to
indicate the means of following this precept.
When I have wanted to understand somebody or myself I have considered,
not the actions, in which everything is relative, but the desires.
“Tell me what you want, and I will tell you what manner of man you are.”
And now I examine myself: what do I want?
I want our wives, our children, our friends, our pupils, to love in
us, not our fame, not the brand and not the label, but to love us as
ordinary men. Anything else? I should like to have had helpers and
successors. Anything else? I should like to wake up in a hundred years’
time and to have just a peep out of one eye at what is happening in
science. I should have liked to have lived another ten years... What
further? Why, nothing further. I think and think, and can think of
nothing more. And however much I might think, and however far my
thoughts might travel, it is clear to me that there is nothing vital,
nothing of great importance in my desires. In my passion for science,
in my desire to live, in this sitting on a strange bed, and in this
striving to know myself--in all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas I form
about everything, there is no common bond to connect it all into one
whole. Every feeling and every thought exists apart in me; and in all
my criticisms of science, the theatre, literature, my pupils, and in all
the pictures my imagination draws, even the most skilful analyst could
not find what is called a general idea, or the god of a living man.
And if there is not that, then there is nothing.
In a state so poverty-stricken, a serious ailment, the fear of death,
the influences of circumstance and men were enough to turn upside down
and scatter in fragments all which I had once looked upon as my theory
of life, and in which I had seen the meaning and joy of my existence.
So there is nothing surprising in the fact that I have over-shadowed the
last months of my life with thoughts and feelings only worthy of a slave
and barbarian, and that now I am indifferent and take no heed of the
dawn. When a man has not in him what is loftier and mightier than
all external impressions a bad cold is really enough to upset his
equilibrium and make him begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a
dog howling in every sound. And all his pessimism or optimism with his
thoughts great and small have at such times significance as symptoms and
nothing more.
I am vanquished. If it is so, it is useless to think, it is useless to
talk. I will sit and wait in silence for what is to come.
In the morning the corridor attendant brings me tea and a copy of the
local newspaper. Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first
page, the leading article, the extracts from the newspapers and
journals, the chronicle of events.... In the latter I find, among other
things, the following paragraph: “Our distinguished savant, Professor
Nikolay Stepanovitch So-and-so, arrived yesterday in Harkov, and is
staying in the So-and-so Hotel.”
Apparently, illustrious names are created to live on their own account,
apart from those that bear them. Now my name is promenading tranquilly
about Harkov; in another three months, printed in gold letters on my
monument, it will shine bright as the sun itself, while I shall be
already under the moss.
A light tap at the door. Somebody wants me.
“Who is there? Come in.”
The door opens, and I step back surprised and hurriedly wrap my
dressing-gown round me. Before me stands Katya.
“How do you do?” she says, breathless with running upstairs. “You didn’t
expect me? I have come here, too.... I have come, too!”
She sits down and goes on, hesitating and not looking at me.
“Why don’t you speak to me? I have come, too... today.... I found out
that you were in this hotel, and have come to you.”
“Very glad to see you,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, “but I am
surprised. You seem to have dropped from the skies. What have you come
for?”
“Oh... I’ve simply come.”
Silence. Suddenly she jumps up impulsively and comes to me.
“Nikolay Stepanovitch,” she says, turning pale and pressing her hands
on her bosom--“Nikolay Stepanovitch, I cannot go on living like this!
I cannot! For God’s sake tell me quickly, this minute, what I am to do!
Tell me, what am I to do?”
“What can I tell you?” I ask in perplexity. “I can do nothing.”
“Tell me, I beseech you,” she goes on, breathing hard and trembling all
over. “I swear that I cannot go on living like this. It’s too much for
me!”
She sinks on a chair and begins sobbing. She flings her head back,
wrings her hands, taps with her feet; her hat falls off and hangs
bobbing on its elastic; her hair is ruffled.
“Help me! help me!” she implores me. “I cannot go on!”
She takes her handkerchief out of her travelling-bag, and with it pulls
out several letters, which fall from her lap to the floor. I pick
them up, and on one of them I recognize the handwriting of Mihail
Fyodorovitch and accidentally read a bit of a word “passionat...”
“There is nothing I can tell you, Katya,” I say.
“Help me!” she sobs, clutching at my hand and kissing it. “You are my
father, you know, my only friend! You are clever, educated; you have
lived so long; you have been a teacher! Tell me, what am I to do?”
“Upon my word, Katya, I don’t know....”
I am utterly at a loss and confused, touched by her sobs, and hardly
able to stand.
“Let us have lunch, Katya,” I say, with a forced smile. “Give over
crying.”
And at once I add in a sinking voice:
“I shall soon be gone, Katya....”
“Only one word, only one word!” she weeps, stretching out her hands to
me.
“What am I to do?”
“You are a queer girl, really...” I mutter. “I don’t understand it! So
sensible, and all at once crying your eyes out....”
A silence follows. Katya straightens her hair, puts on her hat, then
crumples up the letters and stuffs them in her bag--and all this
deliberately, in silence. Her face, her bosom, and her gloves are wet
with tears, but her expression now is cold and forbidding.... I look at
her, and feel ashamed that I am happier than she. The absence of what
my philosophic colleagues call a general idea I have detected in myself
only just before death, in the decline of my days, while the soul of
this poor girl has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her
life!
“Let us have lunch, Katya,” I say.
“No, thank you,” she answers coldly. Another minute passes in silence.
“I don’t like Harkov,” I say; “it’s so grey here--such a grey town.”
“Yes, perhaps.... It’s ugly. I am here not for long, passing through. I
am going on today.”
“Where?”
“To the Crimea... that is, to the Caucasus.”
“Oh! For long?”
“I don’t know.”
Katya gets up, and, with a cold smile, holds out her hand without
looking at me.
I want to ask her, “Then, you won’t be at my funeral?” but she does not
look at me; her hand is cold and, as it were, strange. I escort her to
the door in silence. She goes out, walks down the long corridor without
looking back; she knows that I am looking after her, and most likely she
will look back at the turn.
No, she did not look back. I’ve seen her black dress for the last time:
her steps have died away. Farewell, my treasure!