A fortnight later, in the same room, Nejdanov sat bending over his
three-legged table, writing to his friend Silin by the dim light of a
tallow candle. (It was long past midnight. Muddy garments lay scattered
on the sofa, on the floor, just where they had been thrown off. A fine
drizzly rain pattered against the window-panes and a strong, warm wind
moaned about the roof of the house.)
MY DEAR VLADIMIR,—I am writing to you without giving my address and
will send this letter by a messenger to a distant posting-station as my
being here is a secret, and to disclose it might mean the ruin not of
myself alone. It is enough for you to know that for the last two weeks
I have been living in a large factory together with Mariana. We ran away
from the Sipiagins on the day on which I last wrote to you. A friend has
given us shelter here. For convenience sake I will call him Vassily. He
is the chief here and an excellent man. Our stay is only of a temporary
nature; we will move on when the time for action comes. But, however,
judging by events so far, the time is hardly likely ever to come!
Vladimir, I am horribly miserable. I must tell you before everything
that although Mariana and I ran away together, we have so far been
living like brother and sister. She loves me and told me she would be
mine if I feel I have the right to ask it of her.
Vladimir, I do not feel that I have the right! She trusts me, believes
in my honour—I cannot deceive her. I know that I never loved nor will
ever love any one more than her (of that I am convinced), but for all
that, how can I unite her fate forever with mine? A living being to
a corpse? Well, if not a complete corpse, at any rate, a half-dead
creature. Where would one’s conscience be? I can hear you say that if
passion was strong enough the conscience would be silent. But that is
just the point; I am a corpse, an honest, well-meaning corpse if
you like, but a corpse nevertheless. Please do not say that I always
exaggerate. Everything I have told you is absolutely true. Mariana is
very reserved and is at present wrapped up in her activities in which
she believes, and I?
Well, enough of love and personal happiness and all that. It is now
a fortnight since I have been going among “the people,” and really it
would be impossible to imagine anything more stupid than they are. Of
course the fault lies probably more in me than in the work itself. I
am not a fanatic. I am not one of those who regenerate themselves by
contact with the people and do not lay them on my aching bosom like a
flannel bandage—I want to influence them. But how? How can it be done?
When I am among them I find myself listening all the time, taking things
in, but when it comes to saying anything—I am at a loss for a word! I
feel that I am no good, a bad actor in a part that does not suit him.
Conscientiousness or scepticism are absolutely of no use, nor is a
pitiful sort of humour directed against oneself. It is worse than
useless! I find it disgusting to look at the filthy rags I carry about
on me, the masquerade as Vassily calls it! They say you must first
learn the language of the people, their habits and customs, but rubbish,
rubbish, rubbish, I say! You have only to _believe_ in what you say
and say what you like! I once happened to hear a sectarian prophet
delivering a sermon. Goodness only knows what arrant nonsense he talked,
a sort of gorgeous mix-up of ecclesiastical learning, interspersed with
peasant expressions, not even in decent Russian, but in some outlandish
dialect, but he took one by storm with his enthusiasm—went straight to
the heart. There he stood with flashing eyes, the voice deep and firm,
with clenched fist—as though he were made of iron! No one understood
what he was saying, but everyone bowed down before him and followed
him. But when I begin to speak, I seem like a culprit begging for
forgiveness. I ought to join the sectarians, although their wisdom is
not great... but they have faith, faith!
Mariana too has faith. She works from morning until night with
Tatiana—a peasant woman here, as good as can be and not by any means
stupid; she says, by the way, that we want to become simplified and
calls us simple souls. Mariana is about working with this woman from
morning until night, scarcely sitting down for a moment, just like a
regular ant! She is delighted that her hands are turning red and rough,
and in the midst of these humble occupations is looking forward to the
scaffold! She has even attempted to discard shoes; went out somewhere
barefoot and came back barefoot. I heard her washing her feet for a long
time afterwards and then saw her come out, treading cautiously; they
were evidently sore, poor thing, but her face was radiant with smiles
as though she had found a treasure or been illuminated by the sun. Yes,
Mariana is a brick! But when I try to talk to her of my feelings,
a certain shame comes over me somehow, as though I were violating
something that was not my own, and then that glance... Oh, that
awful devoted, irresistible glance! “Take me,” it seems to say, “_but
remember_....” Enough of this! Is there not something higher and better
in this world? In other words, put on your filthy coat and go among the
people.... Oh, yes, I am just going.
How I loathe this irritability, sensitiveness, impressionable-ness,
fastidiousness, inherited from my aristocratic father! What right had
he to bring me into this world, endowed with qualities quite unsuited
to the sphere in which I must live? To create a bird and throw it in the
water? An aesthetic amidst filth! A democrat, a lover of the people, yet
the very smell of their filthy vodka makes me feel sick!
But it’s too bad blaming my father. He was not responsible for my
becoming a democrat.
Yes, Vladimir, I am in a bad plight. Grey, depressing thoughts are
continually haunting me. Can it be, you will be asking me, that I have
not met with anything consoling, any good living personality, however
ignorant he might not be? How shall I tell you? I have run across
someone—a decent clever chap, but unfortunately, however hard I may try
to get nearer him, he has no need of either me or my pamphlets—that is
the root of the matter! Pavel, a factoryhand here (he is Vassily’s right
hand, a clever fellow with his head screwed on the right way, a future
“head,” I think I wrote to you about him), well this Pavel has a friend,
a peasant called Elizar, also a smart chap, as free and courageous as
one would wish, but as soon as we get together there seems a dead wall
between us! His face spells one big “No!” Then there was another man I
ran across—he was a rather quarrelsome type by the way. “Don’t you try
to get around me, sir,” he said. “What I want to know is would you give
up your land now, or not?” “But I’m not a gentleman,” I remonstrated.
“Bless you!” he exclaimed, “you a common man and no more sense than that!
Leave me alone, please!”
Another thing I’ve noticed is that if anyone listens to you readily
and takes your pamphlets at once, he is sure to be of an undesirable,
brainless sort. Or you may chance upon some frightfully talkative
individual who can do nothing but keep on repeating some favourite
expression. One such nearly drove me mad; everything with him was
“production.” No matter what you said to him he came out with his
“production,” damn him! Just one more remark.
Do you remember some time ago there used to be a great deal of talk
about “superfluous” people—Hamlets? Such “superfluous people” are now
to be met with among the peasants! They have their own characteristics
of course and are for the most part inclined to consumption. They are
interesting types and come to us readily, but as far as the cause is
concerned they are ineffective, like all other Hamlets. Well, what can
one do? Start a secret printing press? There are pamphlets enough as it
is, some that say, “Cross yourself and take up the hatchet,” and others
that say simply, “Take up the hatchet” without the crossing. Or should
one write novels of peasant life with plenty of padding? They wouldn’t
get published, you know. Perhaps it might be better to take up the
hatchet after all? But against whom, with whom, and what for? So that
our state soldier may shoot us down with the state rifle? It would only
be a complicated form of suicide! It would be better to make an end of
yourself—you would at any rate know when and how, and choose the spot
to aim at.
I am beginning to think that if some war were to break out, some
people’s war—I would go and take part in it, not so as to free others
(free others while one’s own are groaning under the yoke!!), but to make
an end of myself....
Our friend Vassily, who gave us shelter here, is a lucky man. He
belongs to our camp, but is so calm and quiet. He doesn’t want to hurry
over things. I should have quarrelled with another, but I can’t with
him. The secret lies not in his convictions, but in the man himself.
Vassily has a character that you can’t kindle, but he’s all right
nevertheless. He is with us a good deal, with Mariana. What surprises
me is that although I love her and she loves me (I see you smiling at
this, but the fact remains!) we have nothing to talk about, while she
is constantly discussing and arguing with him and listening too. I am
not jealous of him; he is trying to find a place for her somewhere, at
any rate, she keeps on asking him to do so, but it makes me feel bitter
to look at them both. And would you believe it—I have only to drop a
hint about marrying and she would agree at once and the priest Zosim
would put in an appearance, “Isaiah, rejoice!” and the rest of it. But
this would not make it any easier for me and _nothing would be changed
by it_.... Whatever you do, there is no way out of it! Life has cut me
short, my dear Vladimir, as our little drunken tailor used to say, you
remember, when he used to complain about his wife.
I have a feeling that it can’t go on somehow, that something is
preparing....
Have I not again and again said that the time has come for action? Well,
so here we are in the thick of it.
I can’t remember if I told you anything about another friend of mine—a
relative of the Sipiagins. He will get himself into such a mess that it
won’t be easy for him to get out of it.
I quite meant finishing this letter and am still going on. It seems to
me that nothing matters and yet I scribble verses. I don’t read them to
Mariana and she is not very anxious to hear them, but you have sometimes
praised my poor attempts and most of all you’ll keep them to yourself.
I have been struck by a common phenomenon in Russia.... But, however, let
the verses speak for themselves—