"Listen, Teresa! What is the meaning of all this? Why must you get
others to write for you when I have already written it, and you
haven't sent it?"
"Sent it where?"
"Why, to this--Boles."
"There's no such person."
I absolutely did not understand it. There was nothing for me but to
spit and go. Then she explained.
"What is it?" she said, still offended. "There's no such person, I
tell you," and she extended her arms as if she herself did not
understand why there should be no such person. "But I wanted him to
be... Am I then not a human creature like the rest of them? Yes, yes,
I know, I know, of course... Yet no harm was done to any one by my
writing to him that I can see..."
"Pardon me--to whom?"
"To Boles, of course."
"But he doesn't exist."
"Alas! alas! But what if he doesn't? He doesn't exist, but he _might!_
I write to him, and it looks as if he did exist. And Teresa--that's
me, and he replies to me, and then I write to him again..."
I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable, so ashamed,
somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature
who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and
this human being had invented a friend for herself!
"Look, now! you wrote me a letter to Boles, and I gave it to some one
else to read it to me; and when they read it to me I listened and
fancied that Boles was there. And I asked you to write me a letter
from Boles to Teresa--that is to me. When they write such a letter for
me, and read it to me, I feel quite sure that Boles is there. And life
grows easier for me in consequence."
"Deuce take you for a blockhead!" said I to myself when I heard this.
And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to
Boles, and an answer from Boles to Teresa. I wrote those answers
well... She, of course, listened to them, and wept like anything,
roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in return for my thus
moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Boles, she
began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles
of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history
began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this
time she is dead.
My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up
at the sky, and thus concluded:
Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the
more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round
in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of
our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do
not understand this.
And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly--and very cruelly. The
fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like
to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh,
and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after
day for ages. And we actually listen--and the devil only knows how
hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud
sermonising of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so
far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of
self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough
of this. It is all as old as the hills--so old that it is a shame to
speak of it. Very old indeed--yes, that's what it is!