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This time I’m giving space to “The Notes of a Certain Individual.” It’s not myself; it’s a completely different individual. I think that no other preface is necessary.
THE NOTES OF A CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL
Semion Ardalionovich said to me all of a sudden the day before yesterday: “Will you, Ivan Ivanych, ever be sober? Be so good as to tell me that.”
A strange demand. I take no offense, I am a timid man; but all the same, here they have actually made me out to be mad. By chance an artist once painted a portrait of me: “After all, you are a literary man,” he said. I submitted, he exhibited it. Then I read: “Go and observe that pathological, almost insane, face.”
Allow for the truth of it, but all the same how can you put it so bluntly into print? In print everything ought to be put decently; there ought to be ideals, but here …
Say it indirectly, at least; that’s what you have style for. But no, he doesn’t care to do it indirectly. Nowadays humor and fine style are disappearing, and abuse is mistaken for wit. I take no offense: God knows I’m not enough of a literary man to go out of my mind. I wrote a short novel—they didn’t publish it. I wrote a feuilleton—they rejected it. I took those feuilletons about from one publisher to another; they were rejected everywhere: “You,” they said, “have no salt.”
“What sort of salt do you want?” I asked with a sneer. “Attic salt?”
That they did not even understand. More often I translate from the French for the booksellers. I write advertisements for shopkeepers too: “A rarity! The very finest tea, from our own plantations …” I made quite a tidy sum for a eulogy on his deceased excellency, Piotr Matveevich. “The Art of Pleasing the Ladies” I compiled as a commission for a bookseller. I’ve brought out some six little works of this kind in the course of my life. I’d like to do a collection of Voltaire’s bon mots, but fear it might seem a little flat to our public. What good is Voltaire now? Nowadays we want a cudgel, not Voltaire. We’ve already knocked each other’s teeth out—to the last tooth. Well, so that’s the extent of my literary activity. Though indeed I do send letters around to the editors, gratis and fully signed. I give them all sorts of admonitions and advice, I critique their work and point out the true path. The letter I dispatched last week to an editor’s office was the fortieth in the last two years. Four roubles wasted on stamps alone. I’ve got a nasty disposition, that’s the thing.
I think that the artist painted me not for the sake of literature, but for the sake of the two symmetrical warts on my forehead, a natural phenomenon, he would say. They have no ideas, so now they’re out for phenomena. And he certainly managed to get my warts down in his portrait—to the life! That’s what they call realism.
And as to madness, a great number of people were written up as mad among us last year. And in what language! “With such an original talent … and yet in the end it appeared … however, one ought to have foreseen it long ago.” That is rather clever; so that from the point of view of pure art one might even commend it. Well but then these so-called madmen turn out to be more intelligent than ever. So, we can drive people mad all right, but we can’t produce anyone more intelligent.
The most intelligent man of all, in my opinion, is the one who, if only once a month, can admit himself to be a fool—an ability unheard of nowadays. It used to be that, once a year at any rate, a fool would recognize that he was a fool, but nowadays no such thing. And they’ve tangled everything up so that there’s no telling a fool from a wise man. This they did on purpose.
I remember a Spanish wit who, two hundred and fifty years ago when the French built their first madhouses, observed: “They have shut up all their fools in a house apart, to make sure that they are wise men themselves.” Indeed: you don’t show your own wisdom by shutting someone else in a madhouse. “K. has gone out of his mind, which means that we are now the sane ones.” No that’s not what it means.
But what the devil … why have I taken leave of my own senses? I grumble on and on. Even the maid is sick of me. Yesterday a friend stopped by. “Your style is changing,” he said; “it’s choppy: you chop and chop—and then a parenthesis, then a parenthesis in the parenthesis, then you stick in something else in brackets, then you begin chopping and chopping all over again …”
My friend is right. Something strange is happening to me. My disposition is changing and my head aches. I am beginning to see and hear strange things. Not voices exactly, but it’s as though someone beside me were muttering, “Bobok, bobok, bobok!”
What’s the meaning of this bobok? I must divert my mind.
I went out in search of diversion, I hit upon a funeral. A distant relation—but he was a collegiate counselor. A widow, five daughters—all pure as a driven snow. What must it come to, even to keep them in slippers? Their father managed it, but now there is only a pittance for a pension. They’ll have to beg like dogs. They have always received me ungraciously. And indeed I should not have gone to the funeral now had it not been for a peculiar circumstance. I followed the procession to the cemetery with the rest; they were proud and held aloof from me. My uniform was certainly rather shabby. It must be some twenty-five years, I believe, since I was at the cemetery; what a wretched place!
To begin with, there’s the smell. About fifteen corpses had been brought there already. Palls of varying prices; there were even two catafalques: one for a general and one for some fine lady or other. Many mourners, a great deal of feigned mourning and a great deal of open buoyancy. The clergy have nothing to complain of; it brings them a good income. But the smell, the smell. I wouldn’t care to serve with the clergy here, even allowing for the odor of sanctity.
I kept stealing cautious glances at the faces of the dead, distrusting my impressions. Some had a mild expression, some looked unpleasant. As a rule the smiles were disagreeable, and in some cases very much so. I don’t like them; they haunt one’s dreams.
During the service I went out of the church into the air: it was a gray day, but dry. It was cold too, but then it was October. I walked about among the tombs. They are of different grades. The third grade costs thirty roubles; decent yet inexpensive. The first two grades are tombs inside the church and under the porch; they cost a pretty penny. On this occasion they were burying six persons in tombs of the third grade, among them the general and the lady.
I glanced into the graves—it was horrible: water everywhere, and such water! Absolutely green, and … but why go on about that! The gravedigger kept bailing it out by the bucketful every few moments. I went out while the service was going on and strolled about beyond the gates. Close by was an almshouse, and a little further off there was a restaurant. It was not a bad little restaurant: you could lunch and be done with it. It was crowded, even a good number of the mourners had shown up. I noticed a great deal of gaiety and genuine animation. I had something to eat and drink.
Then I took a part in bearing the coffin from the church to the graveside. Why is it that corpses in their coffins are so heavy? They say it’s due to some sort of inertia, that the body is no longer controlled by its owner … or some nonsense of that sort, contradictory to the laws of mechanics and common sense. I don’t like to hear people who have nothing but a general education put themselves forward to settle matters that require a specialist; and with us that’s done continually. Civilians love to give opinions about subjects that are the province of the soldier and even of the field-marshal, while men who have been educated as engineers prefer discussing philosophy and political economy.
I didn’t go to the requiem service. I have some pride, and if I’m only received owing to extraneous circumstances, why drag myself to their dinners, even after a funeral. The only thing I don’t understand is why I stayed on at the cemetery; I sat down on a tombstone and sank into appropriate reflections.
I began with the Moscow exhibition and ended with reflecting upon surprise in the abstract. My conclusions about surprise were these:
“To be surprised at everything is stupid of course, while to be surprised at nothing is a great deal more becoming and for some reason accepted as good form. But that’s not really the case. As I see it, to be surprised at nothing is much more stupid than to be surprised at everything. Moreover to be surprised at nothing is very nearly the same as having respect for nothing. And indeed, a stupid man is incapable of feeling respect.”
“But what I desire most of all is to respect something. I thirst to respect something,” one of my acquaintances said to me the other day.
He thirsts to respect something! Heavens, I thought, what would happen to you if you dared to print that nowadays?
At that point my mind went blank. I don’t like reading grave inscriptions: they are everlastingly the same. An unfinished sandwich was lying on the headstone near me; a stupid thing, and out of place. I threw it on the ground, since it was not bread but only a sandwich. Though I believe it’s not a sin to throw bread on the ground, but only on the floor. I must look it up in Suvorin’s calendar.
I suppose I sat there a long time—too long a time, in fact; that is, I even stretched out on a long stone in the shape of a marble coffin. But how did it happen that I then began to hear all sorts of things? At first I paid no attention to this, but treated it with contempt. Still the conversation went on. What I heard was muffled, as though the speakers’ mouths were covered with a pillow, and at the same time the voices were distinct and very near. I came to myself, sat up and began listening attentively.
“Your Excellency, it’s utterly impossible. You led hearts, I return your lead, and here you play the seven of diamonds. You ought to have given me a hint about diamonds.”
“What, play by hard and fast rules? Where’s the charm of that?”
“You must, your Excellency. One can’t do anything without something to go on. We must play with a dummy, keep one hand face-down.”
“Well, you won’t find a dummy here.”
But what conceited words! And how queer and unexpected. One voice was so ponderous, dignified, the other softly suave; I wouln’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself. I had not been to the requiem dinner, I believe. And yet how could they be playing preference here, and what general was this? That the sounds came from under the tombstones—of that there could be no doubt. I bent down and read on the tomb:
“Here lie the remains of Major-General Pervoedov … a cavalier of such and such orders.” Hm! “Passed away in August of this year … fifty-seven … Rest, beloved ashes, till the joyful dawn!”
Hm, the devil, it really is a general! There was no monument yet over the grave from which the obsequious voice came, only a marker. He must have been a fresh arrival. From his voice he was a Court Councilor.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh!” I heard a new voice a dozen yards off from the general’s place, coming from quite a fresh grave—a man’s voice, and a plebeian one, but enfeebled by an ingratiatingly pious manner.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh!”
“Oh, here he is hiccuping again!” cried the haughty and disdainful voice of an irritated lady, apparently of the highest society. “It’s an affliction to be by this shopkeeper!”
“I didn’t hiccup; why, I’ve had nothing to eat. It’s simply my nature. And really, madam, it’s your own crotchets that give you no peace here”
“Then why did you come and lie down here?”
“They put me here, my wife and little children put me here, I didn’t lay myself down. The Sacrament of Death! And I wouldn’t lay myself down beside you, not for any money; I lie here because I had the capital, judging by the price. For we can always do that—spring for a tomb of the third grade.”
“You made piles of money, I suppose? You fleeced people?”
“How could we be fleecing you, we haven’t seen the color of your money since January. There’s a little bill against you at the shop.”
“Well, that’s really stupid; to try and recover debts here is too stupid, to my thinking! Go to the surface. Ask my niece—she inherited.”
“There’s no asking anyone now, and no going anywhere. We’ve both reached the limit, and before the judgment-seat of God we are equal in our transgrissions.”
“In transgrissions,” the lady mimicked him contemptuously. “Don’t you presume to speak to me!”
“Uh-uh-uh-uh!”
“All the same, the shopkeeper obeys the lady, your Excellency.”
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“Well, your Excellency, because, as we all know, there’s a new order of things here.”
“What is this new order then?”
“Well—but we have, in a manner of speaking, died, your Excellency.”
“Oh, yes! But the order of things is still …”
Well, much obliged to them; nothing to say but that it’s quite a consolation! If it’s come to this down here, why even bother looking into things upstairs? But all the same, these are strange doings! I went on listening all the same, though with extreme indignation.
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“No, I’d have liked to see a little more of life! No … you know, a little more of life … that is, to live for a time,” a new voice suddenly sounded from somewhere in the space between the general and the irritable lady.
“Do you hear, your Excellency, our friend is at the same game again. For three days at a time he says nothing, and then he bursts out with ‘I’d like to see a little more of life, yes, a little more of life!’ And with such relish, hee-hee!”
“And such frivolity.”
“It gets hold of him, your Excellency, and do you know, he’s growing sleepy, quite sleepy—he’s been here since April; and then all of a sudden ‘A little more of life!’”
“It is rather dull, though,” observed his Excellency.
“It is, your Excellency. Shall we tease Avdotia Ignatyevna again, hee-hee?”
“No, spare me, please. I can’t endure that quarrelsome virago.”
“And I can’t endure either of you,” cried the virago disdainfully. “You are both of you bores and can’t tell me anything that has ideals in it. I know certain little story about you, your Excellency—don’t turn up your nose, please—how a manservant swept you out from under a married couple’s bed one morning.”
“Nasty woman,” the general muttered through his teeth.
“Avdotia Ignatyevna, ma’am,” the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, “my dear lady, don’t hold a grudge, but tell me, is this what I’m going through the ordeal by torment now, or is it something else?”
“Ah, he’s started up again, and I knew he was going to because there’s a smell from him that means he’s turning over!”
“I’m not turning over, ma’am, and there’s no particular smell from me, for I’ve kept my body whole as it should be, while you, my fine lady, have gone right off—the smell is really more than a body can stand, even for a place like this. It’s just from politeness that I keep quite about it.”
“Ah, you horrid, insulting wretch. He positively stinks and then he talks about me.”
“Uh-uh-uh-uh! If only the day for my requiem would come: I’d hear their tearful voices over my head, my wife’s lament and my children’s soft crying! …”
“Well, that’s a thing to fret for! They’ll stuff themselves with funeral rice and go home…. Oh, I wish somebody would wake up!”
“Avdotia Ignatyevna,” said the insinuating government clerk, “wait a bit, the new arrivals will speak.”
“And are there any young people among them?”
“Yes, there are, Avdotia Ignatyevna. There are some that are not more than lads.”
“Oh, how welcome that would be!”
“Haven’t they begun yet?” inquired his Excellency.
“Even those who came the day before yesterday haven’t awakened yet, your Excellency. As you know, they sometimes don’t speak for a week. It’s a good job that today and yesterday and the day before they brought in a whole lot. As it stands, they’re all last year’s for seventy feet round.”
“Yes, it will be interesting.”
“Yes, your Excellency, they buried Tarasevich, the Privy Councilor, today. I knew it from the voices. I know his nephew, he helped to lower the coffin just now.”
“Hm, where is he, then?”
“Five steps from you, your Excellency, on the left…. Almost at your feet. You should make his acquaintance, your Excellency.”
“Hm, no—I shouldn’t go first”
“Oh, he’ll start things off himself, your Excellency. He’ll be flattered. Leave it to me, your Excellency, and I …”
“Oh, oh! … What is happening to me?” croaked the frightened voice of a new arrival.
“A new arrival, your Excellency, a new arrival, thank God! And how quick he’s been! Sometimes they don’t say a word for a week.”
“Oh, I believe it’s a young man!” Avdotia Ignatyevna cried shrilly.
“I … I … it was a complication, and so sudden!” faltered the young man again. “Only the evening before, Schultz said to me, ‘There’s a complication,’ and I died suddenly before morning. Oh! oh!”
“Well, there’s no help for it, young man,” the general observed graciously, evidently pleased at a new arrival. “You’ve got to be resigned. You are kindly welcome to our Vale of Jehoshaphat, as you might call it. We’re kind-hearted people, you’ll come to know us and appreciate us. Major-General Vassily Vassilich Pervoedov, at your service.”
“Oh, no, no! I simply can’t be! I was at Schultz’s; I had a complication, you know, at first it was my chest and a cough, and then I caught a cold: my lungs, and influenza … and all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly … the worst thing was its being so unexpected.”
“You say it began with the chest,” the government clerk put in suavely, as though he wished to reassure the new arrival.
“Yes, my chest and catarrh, and then no catarrh but still the chest, and I couldn’t breathe … and you know …”
“l know, I know. But if it was the chest you ought to have gone to Ecke and not to Schultz.”
“You know, I kept meaning to go to Botkin’s, but then …”
“Botkin takes quite a bite,” observed the general.
“Oh, no, he doesn’t bite at all; I’ve heard he’s so attentive and tells you everything that’s going to happen before it does.”
“His Excellency was referring to the fees,” the government clerk corrected him.
“Oh, not at all, he only charges three roubles, and then he examines you so thoroughly, and gives you a prescription … and I was very anxious to see him, because people said … Well, gentlemen, should I go to Ecke or to Botkin?”
“What? Where?” The general’s corpse shook with agreeable laughter. The government clerk echoed it in falsetto.
“Dear boy, dear, delightful boy, how I love you!” Avdotia Ignatyevna squealed ecstatically. “I wish they had put someone like you next to me.”
No, I simply could not accept this! And these, these were the dead of our times! Still, I should listen some more and not jump to conclusions. That sniveling new arrival—I remember him just now in his coffin—had the expression of a frightened baby chick, the most repellent expression in the world! However, we’ll wait and see.
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But then such a cacophony started up that I haven’t been able to remember it all. Because a great many woke up at once; an official, a Civil Councilor, awoke, and right then and there began to discuss with the general the project of a new sub-committee in a government department, and the probable transfer of various functionaries in connection with the sub-committee—thereby amusing the general very, very much. I admit I learned a great deal that was new to me, such that I was amazed by the channels through which one may sometimes learn government news in our capital. Then an engineer half woke up, but for a long time he muttered absolute nonsense, so that our friends stopped worrying him and let him lie till he was ready. At last signs of sepulchral re-animation were evinced by the distinguished lady who had been buried that morning under the catafalque. Lebeziatnikov (for the obsequious Lower Court Councilor whom I detested and who lay beside General Pervoedov was, it appears, named Lebeziatnikov) became much excited, and surprised that they were all waking up so soon this time. I admit I was surprised too; but then some of those who awoke had been buried for three days, for instance, one very young girl, just sixteen, who kept giggling … giggling in a horrible and predatory way.
“Your Excellency, Privy Councilor Tarasevich is waking!” Lebeziatnikov announced with extreme urgency.
“Eh? What’s that?” mumbled the Privy Councilor in a tone of distaste as he suddenly awoke. There was a note of willful peremptoriness in the sound of his voice. I listened with curiosity—for during the last few days I had heard something about Tarasevich, something suggestive and alarming to the highest degree.
“It’s I, your Excellency, so far only I.”
“What is your petition? What do you want?”
“Merely to inquire after your Excellency’s health; in these unaccustomed surroundings everyone feels at first, as it were, oppressed. General Pervoedov wishes to have the honor of making your Excellency’s acquaintance, and hopes …”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Surely, your Excellency! General Pervoedov, Vassily Vassilich …”
“Are you General Pervoedov?”
“No, your Excellency, I am only Lower Court Councilor Lebeziatnikov, at your service, but General Pervoedov …”
“Nonsense! And I must ask you to leave me alone.”
“Let him be.” In a dignified manner General Pervoedov himself, finally, checked the disgusting officiousness of his sycophant in the grave.
“He’s not fully awake, your Excellency, you must consider that; it’s the novelty of it all. When he is fully awake he’ll take it differently.”
“Let him be,” repeated the general.
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“Vassily Vassilich! Ahoy, your Excellency!” an entirely new voice shouted loudly and aggressively from close beside Avdotia Ignatyevna. It was a voice of gentlemanly insolence, with the languid pronunciation now fashionable and an arrogant drawl. “I’ve been watching you all for the last two hours; been lying here for three days. Do you remember me, Vassily Vassilich? My name is Klinevich, we met at the Volokonskys’ where they’d let you in too, I don’t know why.”
“What, Count Piotr Petrovich? … Can you really be … and at such an early age? How sorry I am to hear it.”
“And I’m very sorry myself, though I really don’t mind, and I want to get what I can out of wherever I am. And I’m not a count but a baron, only a baron. We ‘re just set of mangy barons, shot up from being lackeys, but why I don’t know and damned if I care. I’m only a scoundrel of pseudo-aristocratic society, and I’m regarded as ‘a charming polisson’. My father’s a wretched little general, and my mother was at one time received en haut lieu. With the help of the Jew Zifel I forged fifty thousand-rouble notes last year and then I informed against him, while Julie Charpentier de Lusignan carried off the money to Bordeaux. And just think, I was engaged to be married—Shchevalevskaia, three months shy of sixteen, still in school, with a dowry of ninety thousand. Avdotia Ignatyevna, do you remember how you seduced me fifteen years ago when I was a boy of fourteen in the Corps des Pages?”
“Ah, that’s you, you rascal! Well, you’re a godsend, anyway, for here …”
“You were mistaken in suspecting your neighbor, the business gentleman, of an unpleasant fragrance … I kept quiet, but I laughed. The stench came from me: they had to bury me in a nailed-up coffin.”
“Ugh, you horrid creature! Still, I am glad you’re here; you can’t imagine the lack of life and wit here.”
“Quite so, quite so, and I intend to start here something original. Your Excellency—I don’t mean you, Pervoedov—the other Your Excellency, Tarasevich, the Privy Councilor! Speak up! Klinevich here, the one who took you to Mlle. Furie in Lent, do you hear?”
“I do, Klinevich, and I am delighted, and, trust me …
“I wouldn’t trust you with a halfpenny, and damned if I care. I simply want to kiss you, dear old man, but luckily I can’t. Do you know, gentlemen, what this grand-pere’s little game was? He died three or four days ago, and would you believe it, he left a deficit of four hundred thousand in government money. It was from the fund for widows and orphans, and for some reason he was the only person in charge of it, so his accounts hadn’t been audited for the last eight years. I can just imagine what long faces they all have now, and what names they’re calling him. It’s a delectable thought, isn’t it? I’ve been wondering for the last year how a wretched old codger of seventy, with gout and rheumatism, came by the physical energy for his debaucheries—and now the riddle is solved! Those widows and orphans—the very thought of them must have fired him up! I knew about it long ago, I was the only one who did know; it was Julie told me, and as soon as I discovered it, I immediately, at Easter it was, attacked him in a friendly way week: ‘Give me twenty-five thousand, if you don’t they’ll be auditing you to-morrow.’ And just think, he only had thirteen thousand left then, so it seems he died very conveniently. Grand-pere, grand-pere; do you hear?”
“Chèr Klinevich, I quite agree with you, and there was no need for you to … to go into such details. Life is so full of suffering and torment and so little to make up for it … that I wanted finally to be at rest, and so far as I can see I hope to get all I can from here too.”
“I’ll bet he’s already sniffed Katiche Berestov!”
“Who? What Katiche?” There was a rapacious quiver in the old man’s voice.
“A-ah, what Katiche? Why, here on the left, five paces from me and ten from you. She’s been here for five days, and if you only knew, grand-pere, what nasty little piece she is! Comes from a good family, well brought up, and a monster, a regular monster! I haven’t introduced her to anyone there, I was the only one who knew her … Katiche, speak up!”
“Hee-hee-hee!” the response came in an unmusical girlish treble, in which there was a note sharp as the prick of a needle. “Hee-hee-hee!”
“And is she a lit-tle blo-onde?” the grand-pere faltered, drawling out the syllables.
“Hee-hee-hee!”
“I’ve … for a long time I’ve,” the old man faltered breathlessly, “dreamed of a little blonde, about fifteen or so, and a situation just like this.”
“Ah, what a monster!” cried Avdotia Ignatyevna.
“Enough!” Klinevich decided. “I see there’s excellent material here. We’ll soon arrange things better. The main thing is to enjoy the rest of our time; but how much time? Hey, you, government clerk, Lebeziatnikov or whatever it is, I think that’s what they called you!”
“Semion Yevseich Lebeziatnikov, Lower Court Councilor, at your service and very, very, very delighted to meet you.”
“Delighted or not, damned if I care; but you seem to know everything here. Tell me first of all how it is we can talk? I’ve been wondering ever since yesterday. We’re dead but all the same we ‘re talking and we seem to be moving-and yet we’re not talking and not moving. What kind of hocuspocus is this?”
“If you want, Baron, Platon Nikolaevich could explain it better than I could.”
“What Platon Nikolaevich is that? Get to the point, don’t beat about the bush.”
“Platon Nikolaevich is our home-grown philosopher, a scientist and Master of Arts. He brought out several philosophical works, but for the last three months he’s been getting quite drowsy, and there’s no stirring him up now. Once a week he’ll mutter a few words, completely irrelevant.”
“To the point, to the point!”
“He explains all this by the simplest fact, namely, that when we were living on the surface we mistakenly thought that death there was death. The body revives, as it were, here, the remains of life are concentrated, but only in the consciousness. I don’t know how to express it, but life goes on, as it were, by inertia. In his opinion everything is concentrated somewhere in the consciousness and goes on for two or three months … sometimes even for half a year…. There’s someone here, for instance, who is almost completely decomposed, but once every six weeks he’ll suddenly utter one word, quite senseless of course, about some bobok: ‘Bobok, bobok.’ Which means that even in him life is still warm, an imperceptible spark …”
“It’s rather stupid. Well, and how is it I have no sense of smell and yet I feel there’s a stench?”
“That … hee-hee … Well, on that point our philosopher is a bit foggy. Apropos of smell, he remarked that the stench one perceives here is, so to speak, a moral one—hee-hee! It’s the stench of the soul, he says, which has these two or three months to recover itself … and this is, so to speak, the last mercy…. Only I think, Baron, that these are mystical ravings, very excusable in his position …
“Enough; all the rest of it, I’m sure, is nonsense. The great thing is that we have two or three months more of life and then—bobok! I propose to spend these two months as agreeably as possible, and so to arrange everything on a new basis. Gentlemen! I propose to be ashamed of nothing.”
“Ah, let’s, let’s not be ashamed of anything!” many voices could be heard saying; and strange to say several new voices were audible, these must have belonged to others newly awakened. The engineer, now fully awake, boomed out his agreement with peculiar delight. The girl Katiche giggled gleefully.
“Oh, how I long to be ashamed of nothing!” Avdotia Ignatyevna exclaimed rapturously.
“You hear that? If even Avdotia Ignatyevna wants to be ashamed of nothing …”
“No, no, no, Klinevich, I was ashamed, up there I was, anyway, but here I terribly, terribly want to be ashamed of nothing.”
“I understand, Klinevich,” boomed the engineer, “you propose to rearrange life here on new and rational principles.”
“Damned if I care about that! For that we’ll wait for Kudeiarov, who was brought here yesterday. When he wakes he’ll tell you all about it. He’s such a personality, such a titanic personality! To-morrow they’ll bring along another natural scientist, I believe, an officer for certain, and three or four days later a journalist, and, I believe, his editor with him. But the devil can take them all so long as we have our own little group, and things arrange themselves. Though meanwhile I don’t want us to be telling lies. That’s all I care about, since that’s one thing that does matter. You can’t exist on the surface without lying, because living and lying are synonymous, but here we won’t lie, for the fun of it. Devil take it, the grave has some value after all! We’ll all tell our stories aloud, and we won’t be ashamed of anything. First of all I’ll tell you about myself. I’m one of the predatory kind, you know. Up on the surface all that was held in check by rotten cords. Away with the cords and let’s spend these two months in shameless truthfulness! Let’s strip and be naked!”
“Let’s be naked, let’s be naked!” cried all the voices.
“I long to be naked, I long to be,” Avdotia Ignatyevna shrilled.
“Ah … ah, I see we’ll have fun here; I don’t want Ecke after all.”
“No, I’d like to see a little more of life … you know, a little more of life!”
“Hee-hee-hee!” giggled Katiche.
“The great thing is that no one can interfere with us, and though I see Pervoedov is in a temper, he can’t reach me with his hand. Grand-pere, do you agree?”
“I fully agree, fully, and with the utmost satisfaction, but on condition that Katiche is the first to give us her biography.”
“I protest! I protest with all my heart!” General Pervoedov brought out firmly.
“Your Excellency!” in hurried excitement and lowering his voice the scoundrel Lebeziatnikov murmured persuasively, “your Excellency, it will be to our advantage to agree. Here, you see, there’s this girl … and all their little affairs.”
“There’s the girl, it’s true, but …”
“It’s to our advantage, your Excellency, upon my word it is! If only as an experiment, let’s try it…”
“Even in the grave they won’t let us rest in peace.”
“In the first place, General, you were playing preference in the grave, and in the second you … be … damned.” drawled Klinevich.
“Sir, I beg you not to forget yourself.”
“What? You know you can’t get me, and I can tease you from here as though you were Julie’s lapdog. And another thing, gentlemen, how is he a general here? He was a general there, but here he’s zero.”
“No, not zero…. Even here …”
“Here you ‘ll rot in the grave and six brass buttons will be all that’s left of you.”
“Bravo, Klinevich, ha-ha-ha!” roared voices.
“I have served my sovereign … I have the sword …”
“Your sword is only fit to prick mice, and you never drew it even for that.”
“That makes no difference; I formed a part of the whole.”
“There are all sorts of parts in a whole.”
“Bravo, Klinevich, bravo! Ha-ha-ha!”
“I don’t understand what the sword stands for,” boomed the engineer.
“We shall run away from the Prussians like mice, they’ll crush us to powder!” cried a voice in the distance that was unfamiliar to me, that was positively spluttering with glee.
“The sword, sir, is an honor,” the general cried, but only I heard him. There arose a prolonged and furious roar, clamor, and hubbub, and only the hysterically impatient squeals of Avdotia were audible.
“But hurry up, hurry up! Ah, when do we start being ashamed of nothing!”
“Uh-uh-uh! … The soul does in truth pass through torments!” exclaimed the plebeian voice, and …
And at that moment I suddenly sneezed. It happened unexpectedly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: everything became as silent as one expects it to be in a churchyard, it all vanished like a dream. The real silence of the grave set in. I don’t believe they were embarrassed by my presence: they had made up their minds to be ashamed of nothing! I waited five minutes or so—not a word, not a sound. It also can’t be supposed that they were afraid of my informing the police; because what could the police do to them? I reluctantly conclude that they must have some secret, unknown to the living, which they carefully conceal from every mortal.
“Well, my dears,” I thought, “I’ll be visiting you again.” And with those words, I left the cemetery.
______________
No, that I cannot accept; no, I truly cannot! Bobok doesn’t trouble me (there, so that’s what “bobok” turned out to mean!)
Depravity in such a place, depravity of the last aspirations, depravity of sodden and rotten corpses —and not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! Those moments have been granted, vouchsafed to them, and … and, worst of all, in such a place! No, that I cannot accept.
I’ll go to tombs of other grades, I’ll listen in everywhere. To be sure I should listen everywhere, and not merely in one spot, in order to form an idea. I just might stumble on something reassuring.
But I’ll certainly return there. They promised their biographies and anecdotes of all sorts. Phew! But I’ll go, I’ll certainly go; it’s a question of conscience!
I’ll take it to the Citizen; there’s an editor there who’s had his portrait exhibited too. He just might print it.
Translated by Jessie Coulson; ed. by A. L. and M. K.
But I’m a novelist, and there’s a certain “tale” that, I suppose, I’ve made up. Why do I write “I suppose?” Of course I know for a fact that I’ve made it up, but still I keep imagining that it must have occurred, that precisely this did occur on Christmas Eve in a certain great city, on Christmas Eve, in a time of terrible frost.
I imagine that in a cellar there was a boy, but still very young, about six or even younger. This boy woke up that morning in the damp and cold cellar. He was dressed in a sort of tiny thin dressing-gown and was shivering with cold. His breath floated out in a cloud of white steam, and, sitting on a trunk in the corner, in his boredom he was voluntarily blowing the steam out of his mouth, entertaining himself as he watched it float away. But he was very hungry. Several times that morning he had approached up to the pallet where his sick mother lay on a mattress thin as a pancake, some sort of bundle under her head for a pillow. How had she come here? She must have come with her boy from some other town and suddenly fallen ill. The landlady who rented these “corners” had been taken, two days before, to the police station. The lodgers had dispersed for the holiday, and the one remaining layabout had for the whole last twenty-four hours been sprawled out dead drunk, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, moaning with her rheumatism, lay a wretched old woman of eighty who had once been a children’s nurse somewhere, but was now left to die alone, groaning, scolding and grumbling at the boy so that he was afraid to go near her corner. He’d gotten a drink of water in the outer room, but couldn’t find a little piece of crust anywhere, and had been on the point of waking his mother a dozen times. He got frightened, at last, in the darkness: evening had fallen long since, but no fire had been lit. Touching his mother’s face, he was surprised that she didn’t move at all, and that she was as cold as the wall. “But it’s very cold in here,” he thought. He stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting that his hand still rested on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he blew on his small fingers to warm them, and suddenly, having fumbled for his cap on the bed, haltingly, feeling his way, he left the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but was afraid of the big dog which had been howling all day by the neighbor’s door at the top of the stairs. However the dog was not there now, and the boy went out into the street.
Heavens, what a city! He’d never seen anything like it before. Where he’d come from there was such black darkness at night, with one lamp for a whole street. The little, low-pitched, wooden houses were closed up with shutters; dusk fell—there was no one about, everyone shut themselves up in their homes and there was nothing but the howling packs of dogs, hundreds and thousands of them barking and howling all night. But it had been so warm there and they gave him food, while here—oh dear, if only he had something to eat! And what a noise and rattle here, what light and what people, horses and carriages, and what a frost—what a frost! The frozen steam hangs in clouds over the hard-driven horses, over their warmly breathing muzzles; their hoofs clink against the stones through the powdery snow, and everyone pushes so, and—oh, dear, he wants so much to eat something, even just a little piece of something—and how his fingers suddenly began hurting him. A policeman walked by and turned away to avoid seeing the boy.
There was another street—oh, what a wide one, here he’d be run over for certain; how everyone was shouting, racing and driving along, and the light, the light! And what was this? A huge glass window, and through the window a tree reaching up to the ceiling; it was a fir tree, and on it were ever so many lights, so many gold paper ornaments and apples, and around the tree little dolls and horses; and running about the room there were children, dressed up and clean, laughing and playing and eating and drinking something. And then a little girl began dancing with one of the boys, what a pretty little girl! And he could hear the music through the window. The boy looked and wondered and laughed, though his toes were aching with the cold and his fingers were red and stiff so that it hurt him to move them. And all at once the boy remembered how his toes and fingers hurt him, and began crying, and ran on; and again through another window-pane he saw another Christmas tree, and on a table cakes of all sorts—almond cakes, red cakes and yellow cakes, and three grand ladies were sitting there, and they gave the cakes to anyone who came up to them, and the door kept opening, lots of gentlemen and ladies went in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Oh, how they shouted at him and waved him back! One lady went up to him hurriedly and slipped a kopeck into his hand, and with her own hands opened the door into the street for him! How frightened he was. And the kopeck rolled away and clinked upon the steps; he couldn’t bend his red fingers to hold it right. The boy ran away and went on, where he did not know. He was ready to cry again but he was afraid, and ran on and on and blew on his fingers. And he was miserable because he felt suddenly so lonely and terrified, and all at once, mercy on us! What was this again? People were standing in a crowd admiring something. Behind a glass window there were three little dolls, dressed in red and green dresses, and exactly, exactly as though they were alive. One was a little old man sitting and playing a big violin, the two others were standing close by and playing little violins, and nodding in time, and looking at one another, and their lips moved, just as if they were really talking only you couldn’t hear through the glass. And at first the boy thought they were alive, and when he grasped that they were dolls he laughed. He had never seen such dolls before, and had no idea there were such dolls! And he wanted to cry, but he the dolls were funny, so funny. All at once he fancied that some one behind him caught at his smock: a wicked big boy was standing beside him and suddenly hit him on the head, snatched off his cap and tripped him up. The boy fell down on the ground, at once there was a shout, he was numb with fright, he jumped up and ran away. He ran, and not knowing where he was going, ran in at the gate of some one’s courtyard, and sat down behind a wood-stack: “They won’t find me here, besides it’s dark!”
He sat huddled up and was breathless from fright, and all at once, quite suddenly, he felt so happy: his hands and feet suddenly left off aching and grew so warm, as warm as though he were on a stove; then he shivered all over, then he gave a start, why, he must have been asleep. How nice to have a sleep here! “I’ll sit here a little and go and look at the dolls again,” said the boy, and smiled thinking of them. “Just as though they were alive! …” And suddenly he heard his mother singing over him. “Mama, I’m sleeping; how nice it is to sleep here!”
“Come to my Christmas tree, little one,” a soft voice suddenly whispered over his head.
He thought that this was his mother again, but no, it was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but someone bent over and embraced him in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and … and all at once—oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! And yet it was not a fir tree, he had never seen a tree like that! Where was he now? Everything was bright and shining, and all round him were dolls; but no, they weren’t dolls, they were little boys and girls, only so bright and shining. They all came flying round him, they all kissed him, took him and carried him along with them, and he was flying himself, and he saw that his mother was looking at him and laughing joyfully. “Mama; oh, how nice it is here, Mama!” And again he kissed the children and wanted to tell them at once about those dolls in the shop window.
“Who are you, boys? Who are you, girls?” he asked, laughing and admiring them.
“This is Jesus’ Christmas tree,” they answered. “Jesus always has a Christmas tree party on this day, for the little children who have no tree of their own …” And he found out that all these little boys and girls were children just like himself; that some had frozen to death still in the baskets in which as babies they had been laid on the doorsteps of well-to-do Petersburg people, others had been boarded out with Finnish women by the Foundling Hospital and had been suffocated, others had died at their starved mother’s breasts (in the Samara famine), others had died in third-class railway carriages from the foul air; and yet they were all here, they were all like angels about Christ, and He was in the midst of them and held out His hands to them and blessed them and their sinful mothers … And the mothers of these children stood on one side weeping; each one knew her boy or girl, and the children flew up to them and kissed them and wiped away their tears with their little hands, and begged them not to weep because they were so happy.
And down below in the morning the porter found the little dead body of a frozen child behind the wood stack; they sought out his mother too … She’d died before him. They met before the Lord God in Heaven.
Why have I made up such a story, so out of keeping with an ordinary diary, and a writer’s diary at that? And I had promised two more stories dealing primarily with real events! But that’s just it, I keep thinking and imagining that all this may have happened really—that is, what took place in the cellar and on the wood stack; but as for Christ’s Christmas tree party—I don’t even know what to say to you, could that have happened, or not? That’s why I’m a novelist, to think things up.
Translated by Jessie Coulson; edited by A. L. and M.K.
I
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me—and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter—not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand it.
In old days I used to be miserable at seeming ridiculous. Not seeming, but being. I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous. Afterwards I went to school, studied at the university, and, do you know, the more I learned, the more thoroughly I understood that I was ridiculous. So that it seemed in the end as though all the sciences I studied at the university existed only to prove and make evident to me as I went more deeply into them that I was ridiculous. It was the same with life as it was with science. With every year the same consciousness of the ridiculous figure I cut in every relation grew and strengthened. Every one always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd, it was myself, and what I resented most of all was that they did not know that. But that was my own fault; I was so proud that nothing would have ever induced me to tell it to any one. This pride grew in me with the years; and if it had happened that I allowed myself to confess to any one that I was ridiculous, I believe that I should have blown out my brains with a revolver the same evening. Oh, how I suffered in my early youth from the fear that I might gave way and confess it to my school-fellows. But since I grew to manhood, I have for some unknown reason become calmer, though I realized my awful characteristic more fully every year. I say “unknown,” for to this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul through something which was of more consequence than anything else about me: that something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long had an inkling of it, but the full realization came last year almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many they were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November—on the third of November, to be precise—and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy evening, one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I was going home at about eleven o’clock, and I remember that I thought that the evening could not be gloomier. Even physically. Rain had been falling all day, and it had been the coldest, gloomiest, almost menacing rain, with, I remember, an unmistakable grudge against mankind. Suddenly between ten and eleven it had stopped, and was followed by a horrible dampness, colder and damper than the rain, and a sort of steam was rising from everything, from every stone in the street, and from every by-lane if one looked down it as far as one could. A thought suddenly occurred to me, that if all the street lamps had been put out it would have been less cheerless, that the gas made one’s heart sadder because it lighted it all up. I had had scarcely any dinner that day, and had been spending the evening with an engineer, and two other friends had been there also. I sat silent—I fancy I bored them. They talked of something rousing and suddenly they got excited over it. But they did not really care, I could see that, and only made a show of being excited. I suddenly said as much to them. “My friends,” I said, “you really do not care one way or the other.” They were not offended, but they all laughed at me. That was because I spoke without any note of reproach, simply because it did not matter to me. They saw it did not, and it amused them.
As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had gaven me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night. I had firmly determined to do so two months before, and poor as I was, I bought a splendid revolver that very day, and loaded it. But two months had passed and it was still lying in my drawer; I was so utterly indifferent that I wanted to seize a moment when I would not be so indifferent—why, I don’t know. And so for two months every night that I came home I thought I would shoot myself. I kept waiting for the right moment. And so now this star gave me a thought. I made up my mind that it should certainly be that night. And why the star gave me the thought I don’t know.
And just as I was looking at the sky, this little girl took me by the elbow. The street was empty, and there was scarcely any one to be seen. A cabman was sleeping in the distance in his cab. It was a child of eight with a kerchief on her head, wearing nothing but a wretched little dress all soaked with rain, but I noticed her wet broken shoes and I recall them now. They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly pulled me by the elbow and called me. She was not weeping, but was spasmodically crying out some words which she could not utter properly, because she was shivering and shuddering all over. She was in terror about something, and kept crying, “Mammy, mammy!” I turned facing her, I did not say a word and went on; but she ran pulling at me, and there was that note in her voice which in frightened children means despair. I know that sound. Though she did not articulate the words, I understood that her mother was dying, or that something of the sort was happening to them, and that she had run out to call some one, to find something to help her mother. I did not go with her; on the contrary, I had an impulse to drive her away. I told her first to go to a policeman. But clasping her hands, she ran beside me sobbing and gasping, and would not leave me. Then I stamped my foot, and shouted at her. She called out “Sir! sir! …” but suddenly abandoned me and rushed headlong across the road. Some other passerby appeared there, and she evidently flew from me to him.
I mounted up to my fifth story. I have a room in a flat where there are other lodgers. My room is small, poor, with a garret window in the shape of a semicircle. I have a sofa covered with American leather, a table with books on it, two chairs and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can be, but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the candle, and began thinking. In the room next to mine, through the partition wall, a perfect Bedlam was going on. It had been going on for the last three days. A retired captain lived there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen of doubtful reputation, drinking vodka and playing Stoss with old cards. The night before there had been a fight, and I know that two of them had been for a long time engaged in dragging each other about by the hair. The land-lady wanted to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain. There was only one other lodger in the flat, a thin little regimental lady, on a visit to Petersburg, with three little children who had been taken ill since they came into the lodgings. Both she and her children were in mortal fear of the captain, and lay trembling and crossing themselves all night, and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright. That captain, I know for a fact, sometimes stops people on the Nevskii Prospect and begs. They won’t take him into the service, but strange to say (that’s why I am telling this), all months that the captain has been here his behavior has caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his acquaintance from the very beginning, and he, too, was bored with me from the first; but I never care how much they shout the other side of the partition nor how many of them there are in there—I never care: I sit up all night and forget them so completely that I do not even hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in my arm-chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. I sit—don’t even think; ideas of a sort wander through my mind and I let them come and go as they will. A whole candle is burnt every night. I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver and put it down before me. When I’d done so I asked myself, I remember, “Is that so?” and answered with complete conviction, “It is.” That is, I’ll shoot myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain, but how much longer I should go on sitting at the table I did not know. And no doubt I should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl.
II
You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me. I had felt pity that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why, then, had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that occurred to me at the time: when she was calling and pulling at me, a question suddenly arose before me and I could not settle it. The question was an idle one, but I was vexed. I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have mattered to me. Why was it that all at once I did not feel that nothing mattered and was sorry for the little girl? I remember that I was very sorry for her, so much so that I felt a strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the moment, but the sensation persisted at home when I was sitting at the table, and I was very much irritated as I had not been for a long time past. One reflection followed another. I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and feel shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill myself, in two hours, say, what is the little girl to me and what have I to do with shame or with anything else in the world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely nothing. And can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall completely cease to exist immediately and so everything else will cease to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of pity for the child nor the feeling of shame after a contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at the unhappy child as though to say—not only I feel no pity, but even if I behave inhumanly and contemptibly, I am free to, for in another two hours everything will be extinguished. Do you believe that that was why I shouted that? I am almost convinced of it now. It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for any one when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself. I remember that as I sat and reflected, I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after another quite the other way, and thought of something quite new. For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonorable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive and realize in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never, under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the moon—should I care or not? Should I feel shame for that action or not? These were idle and superfluous questions for the revolver was already lying before me, and I knew in every fiber of my being that it would happen for certain, but they excited me and I raged. I could not die now without having first settled something. In short, the child had saved me, for I put off my pistol shot for the sake of these questions. Meanwhile the clamor had begun to subside in the captain’s room: they had finished their game, were settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point I suddenly fell asleep in my chair at the table—a thing which had never happened to me before. I dropped asleep quite unawares.
Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewelry, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it! My brother died five years ago, for instance. I sometimes dream of him; he takes part in my affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my dream I quite know and remember that my brother is dead and buried. How is it that I am not surprised that, though he is dead, he is here beside me and working with me? Why is it that my reason fully accepts it? But enough. I will begin about my dream. Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream—oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power! Listen.
III
I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to be still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart—my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded and benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement. People were walking and shouting around me, the captain bawled, the landlady shrieked—and suddenly another break and I was being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin was shaking and reflected upon it, and for the first time the idea struck me that I was dead, utterly dead, I knew it and had no doubt of it, I could neither see nor move and yet I was feeling and reflecting. But I was soon reconciled to the position, and as one usually does in a dream, accepted the facts without disputing them.
Now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I was left alone, utterly alone. I didn’t move. Whenever before I had imagined being buried the one sensation I associated with the grave was that of damp and cold. So now I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but I felt nothing else.
I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting without dispute that a dead man had nothing to expect. But it was damp. I don’t know how long a time passed—whether an hour, or several days, or many days. But all at once a drop of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way through the coffin lid; it was followed a minute later by a second, then a minute later by a third—and so on, regularly every minute. There was a sudden glow of profound indignation in my heart, and I suddenly felt in it a pang of physical pain. “That’s my wound,” I thought; “that’s the bullet …” And drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed eyelid. And all at once, not with my voice, but with my entire being, I called upon the power that was responsible for all that was happening to me:
“Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational than what’s happening here is possible, suffer it to be here now. But if you’re revenging yourself upon me for my senseless suicide by the hideousness and absurdity of this subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no torture could ever equal the contempt which I’ll go on dumbly feeling, though my martyrdom may last a million years!”
I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but I knew with infinite unshakable certainty that everything would change immediately. And behold my grave suddenly was rent asunder, that is, I don’t know whether it was opened or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown being and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had there been such darkness. We were flying through space far away from the earth. I did not question the being who was taking me; I was proud and waited. I assured myself that I was not afraid, and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were flying, I cannot imagine; it happened as it always does in dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of thought and existence, and only pause upon the points for which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly saw in the darkness a star. “Is that Sirius?” I asked impulsively, though I had not meant to ask any questions.
“No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were coming home,” the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange to say, I did not like that being, in fact I felt an intense aversion for it. I had expected complete non-existence, and that was why I had put a bullet through my heart. And here I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet living, existing. “And so there is life beyond the grave,” I thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. “And if I have got to exist again,” I thought, “and live once more under the control of some irresistible power, I won’t be vanquished and humiliated.”
“You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for that,” I said suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain from the humiliating question which implied a confession, and feeling my humiliation stab my heart as with a pin. He did not answer my question, but all at once I felt that he was not even despising me, but was laughing at me and had no compassion for me, and that our journey had an unknown and mysterious object that concerned me only. Fear was growing in my heart. Something was mutely and painfully communicated to me from my silent companion, and permeated my whole being. We were flying through dark, unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were stars in the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already flying through those spaces. I expected something with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the depths: I suddenly caught sight of our sun! I knew that it could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth, and that we were an infinite distance from our sun, but for some reason I knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with ecstasy in my heart: the kindred power of the same light which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it, and I had a sensation of life, the old life of the past for the first time since I had been in the grave.
“But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our sun,” I cried, “where is the earth?”
And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the distance with an emerald light. We were flying straight towards it.
“And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be the law of Nature? … And if that is an earth there, can it be just the same earth as ours … just the same, as poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved for ever, arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same poignant love for her that we feel for our earth?” I cried out, shaken by irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth which I had left. The image of the poor child whom I had repulsed flashed through my mind.
“You shall see it all,” answered my companion, and there was a note of sorrow in his voice.
But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was growing before my eyes; I could already distinguish the ocean, the outline of Europe; and suddenly a feeling of a great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart.
“How can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love only that earth which I have left, stained with my blood, when, in my ingratitude, I quenched my life with a bullet in my heart. But I have never, never ceased to love that earth, and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved it more than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don’t want, I won’t accept life on any other!”
But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite without noticing how, found myself on this other earth, in the bright light of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was standing on one of the islands that make up on our globe the Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us, only everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the splendor of some great, holy triumph attained at last. The caressing sea, green as emerald, splashed softly upon the shore and kissed it with manifest, almost conscious love. The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their blossom, and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with their soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of love. The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks in the air, and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck me with their darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the people of this happy land. They came to me of themselves, they surrounded me, kissed me. The children of the sun, the children of their sun—oh, how beautiful they were! Never had I seen on our own earth such beauty in mankind. Only perhaps in our children, in their earliest years, one might find some remote, faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a serenity that comes of perfect understanding, but those faces were gay; in their words and voices there was a note of childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth untarnished by the Fall; on it lived people who had not sinned. They lived just in such a paradise as that in which, according to all the legends of mankind, our first parents lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing joyfully, thronged round me and caressed me; they took me home with them, and each of them tried to reassure me. Oh, they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I fancied, to know everything without asking, and they wanted to make haste and smooth away the signs of suffering from my face.
IV
And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance, no science like ours. But I soon realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher. and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to live, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that—at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the starts, not only in thought, but by some living channel. Oh, these people did not persist in trying to make me understand them, they loved me without that, but I knew that they would never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which they lived and mutely worshipped them themselves. And they saw that and let me worship them without being abashed at my adoration, for they themselves loved much. They were not unhappy on my account when at times I kissed their feet with tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they would respond to mine. At times I asked myself with wonder how it was they were able never to offend a creature like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of jealousy or envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that, boastful and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I knew—of which, of course, they had no notion—that I was never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to benefit them.
They were as gay and sportive as children. They wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang their lovely songs; their fare was light—the fruits of their trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the animals who loved them. The work they did for food and raiment was brief and not laborious. They loved and begot children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth, all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new beings to share their happiness. There was no quarreling, no jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the words meant. Their children were the children of all, for they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness among them, though there was death; but their old people died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last farewell with bright and loving smiles. I never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and contemplative. One might think that they were still in contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.
In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one’s heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other but an all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely understood at all. Though I understood the words I could never fathom their full significance. It remained, as it were, beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning melancholy that at times approached insufferable sorrow; that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without tears … that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was always a yearning anguish: why could I not hate them without loving them? Why could I not help forgiving them? And in my love for them there was a yearning grief: why could I not love them without hating them? They listened to me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I knew that they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence my heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the feeling of the fullness of life took my breath away, and I worshipped them in silence.
Oh, every one laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images of my dreams, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so lovely, enchanting and so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make up the details, and so of course to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter, happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all! For then something happened so awful, something so horribly true that it could not have been imagined in a dream. My heart may have originated the dream, but would my heart alone have been capable of originating the awful event which happened to me afterwards? How could I alone have invented it or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty heart and my fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation of truth? Oh, judge for yourselves: hitherto I have concealed it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I … corrupted them all!
V
Yes, yes it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy—cruelty … Oh, I don’t know, I don’t remember; but soon, very soon the first blood was shed. They marveled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honor sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thin. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility of this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realized, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if some one had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me:
“We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.”
That is what they said, and after saying such things every one began to love himself better than any one else, and indeed they could not do otherwise. All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones. Holy blood was shed on the threshold of the temples. Then there arose men who began to think how to bring all people together again, so that everybody, while still loving himself best of all, might not interfere with others, and all might live together in something like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this idea. All the combatants at the same time firmly believed that science, wisdom and the instinct of self-preservation would force men at last to unite into a harmonious and rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten matters, “the wise” endeavored to exterminate as rapidly as possible all who were “not wise” and did not understand their idea, that the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the instinct of self-preservation grew rapidly weaker; there arose men, haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In order to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did not succeed—to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of non-existence and self-destruction for the sake of the everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning. They glorified suffering in their songs. I moved about among them, wringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved them perhaps more than in old days when there was no suffering in their faces and when they were innocent and so lovely. I loved the earth they had polluted even more than when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it. Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but only for myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming, cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing, mine alone; that it was I had brought them corruption, contamination and falsity. I besought them to crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood should be drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified me, they declared that they had only got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was becoming dangerous and that they should lock me up in a madhouse if I did not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession of my soul that my heart was wrung, and I felt as though I were dying; and then … then I awoke.
It was morning, that is, it was not yet daylight, but about six o’clock. I woke up in the same arm-chair; my candle had burnt out; every one was asleep in the captain’s room, and there was a stillness all round, rare in our flat. First of all I leapt up in great amazement: nothing like this had ever happened to me before, not even in the most trivial detail; I had never, for instance, fallen asleep like this in my arm-chair. While I was standing and coming to myself I suddenly caught sight of my revolver lying loaded, ready—but instantly I thrust it away! Oh, now, life, life! I lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words but with tears; ecstasy, immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul. Yes, life and spreading the good tidings! Oh, I at that moment resolved to spread the tidings, and resolved it, of course, for my whole life. I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings—of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.
And since then I have been preaching! Moreover I love all those who laugh at me more than any of the rest. Why that is so I do not know and cannot explain, but so be it. I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now, what shall I be later on? It is true indeed: I am vague and confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall be more so. And of course I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make mistakes? And yet, you know, all are making for the same goal, all are striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads. It is an old truth, but this is what is new: I cannot go far wrong. For I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth—it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt, and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake—that was my first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I was lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But how establish paradise—I don’t know, because I do not know how to put it into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won’t leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that. It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the great thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted—you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it’s an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times—but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness—that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only every one wants it, it can all be arranged at once.
And I tracked down that little girl … and I shall go on and on!
Translated by C. Garnett, ed. by A.L. and M.K.