MAKING A SUPERMAN

The wisest of the citizens pondered the following problem:—

“What does it mean? Wherever one looks everything is at sixes and sevens.”

And after much thought they concluded:

“It is because we have no personality. It is necessary for us to create a central thinking organ which shall be quite free from any sort of bias, which shall be capable of raising itself above everything, which shall stand out from everything and everybody—in the same way as a goat from amongst a flock of sheep.” Somebody said:

“Brothers, have we not already suffered enough from central personalities?” They did not like this.

“That seems to savour of politics, and even of civic sorrow.”

Somebody insisted:

“But how can we ignore politics if politics penetrate everything? The facts are that the prisons are overcrowded, that in the hard labour prisons it is impossible to turn round; and to remedy this we must enlarge the scope of our rights.”

But they answered him sternly:

“This, sir, is idealism, and it is time you left it alone. A new man is wanted, and nothing else.”

After this they set to work to create a man according to the methods referred to in the traditions of the holy fathers: they spat on the ground, and began to mix the spittle with earth. Then they smeared themselves up to the ears with the mixture, but the results were poor. In their eagerness they trampled rare flowers into the ground, and destroyed useful cereals. They tried hard, they sweated in the earnestness of their efforts; but there was no result—nothing but a waste of words and mutual accusations of creative incapacity. They even put the elements out of patience by their zeal: whirlwinds began to blow, the heat became intense, it thundered, and the rain poured down in torrents; the ground became sodden, and the whole atmosphere saturated with heavy odours, so that it was difficult to breathe.

However, from time to time this wrestling with the elements seemed to come to an end, and a new personality came into God’s world.

There was general rejoicing everywhere, but it was short-lived, and soon turned into oppressive embarrassment. For, if a new personality arose out of the peasant soil, it became forthwith a polished merchant, and, starting business at once, began to sell the fatherland piecemeal to foreigners—first of all at forty-five copecks6 a plot, and afterwards going to such lengths that it wanted to sell a whole district, with all its live stock and thinking machines.

If they stirred up a new man on merchant soil he either was born a degenerate or at once became a bureaucrat. If they did it on a nobleman’s estate, beings arose, as they had done before, who seemed intent upon swallowing up the whole revenue of the state. On the soil of the middle class and petty property-owners all sorts of wild thistles grew: agents-provocateurs, Nihilists, pacifists, and goodness knows what.

“But we already have all these in a sufficient quantity,” the wise citizens confessed to each other.

And they were sadly puzzled.

“We have made some kind of mistake in the technique of creation,” they said.

“But what was the mistake?”

They sat in the mud and thought very hard.

Then they began to upbraid one another:

“You, Selderey Lavrovich, you spit too much, and in all directions.”

“And you, Kornishon Lukich, are too faint-hearted to do likewise.”

The newly born Nihilists, pretending to be Vaska Buslayeffs, looked at everything with contempt and shouted:

“Oh, you vegetables, try and think what place is best, and we will help you to spit on it.”

And they spat and spat.

They all seemed bored and irritable with one another; and they were covered with mud.

Just at that time Mitya Korofyshkin, nicknamed “Steel Claw,” who was playing truant from school, passed by. He was a pupil in the second class of the Miamlin Gymnasium, and was known as a collector of foreign stamps. As he passed he saw the people sitting in a puddle and spitting, deep in thought.

“Grown-ups, and they bespatter themselves like that!” thought Mitya contemptuously; which was natural in one of his tender years.

He peeped to see if there was not a teacher in their midst, and not noticing one he inquired:

“What are you doing in the puddle, uncles?”

One of the citizens, resenting the question, immediately began to argue:

“Where do you see a puddle? It is simply a reflection of the primordial chaos.”

“And what are you doing?”

“We are trying to create a new man. We are sick of people like you.”

Mitya became interested.

“After whose likeness?”

“What do you mean? We want to create somebody unlike anyone else. Go away.”

As Mitya was a child, and not yet versed in the secrets of nature, he, of course, was glad of the opportunity to be present at such an important affair, and he asked them simply:

“Will you make him with three legs?”

“What are you saying?”

“How funnily he will run!”

“Go away, boy.”

“Or with wings! What a fine thing it would be! Make him with wings, by Jove! and let him kidnap teachers, like the condor did in The Children of Captain Grant. There, of course, the condor does not kidnap a teacher, but it would be better if he did kidnap the teacher.”

“Boy, you are talking nonsense, and it is sinful nonsense. Remember your prayers before and after your lessons.”

But Mitya was a boy with a fertile imagination, and he became very excited.

“As the teacher is going to the gymnasium it will grab him by the collar and carry him away to somewhere in the air, it makes no difference where. The teacher will simply kick and drop all his books—I hope the books will never be found.”

“Boy, have reverence for your elders.”

“And the teacher shouts to his wife from above: ‘Good-bye, I am going to heaven like Elijah and Enoch,’ And his wife kneels in the middle of the road and whimpers: ‘My school teacher! Oh, my school teacher!’”

They got quite angry with him.

“Get away, you are jabbering nonsense. There are many who can do that. You are beginning too soon.”

They drove him away, but he stopped before he had gone far, thought a while, and asked:

“Do you really mean it?”

“Of course.”

“And it won’t work?”

They sighed sullenly and said:

“No; leave us alone.”

Then Mitya moved a little farther away, put out his tongue and mocked them:

“I know why! I know why!”

He ran away, but they chased him, and as they were used to changing the scene of their operations and running from place to place they soon caught him. Then they began to beat him.

“Oh, you scamp…cheeking your elders.”

Mitya cried and implored:

“Uncles, I will give you a Soudanese stamp—I have a duplicate.… I will make you a present of my penknife——”

But they tried to frighten him with the headmaster’s name.

“Uncles, really and truly, I will never tease you again. Now I have really guessed why a new man cannot be created.”

“Speak!”

“Don’t hold me so tight!”

They released him all but his hands, and he said to them:

“Uncles, it is not the proper soil. The soil is no good, on my word of honour. You may spit as much as you like, nothing will come of it. For, when God created Adam in his image, the land belonged to nobody. Now it all belongs to someone or other; therefore man now belongs to somebody. Spitting makes no difference whatever.”

They were so dumbfounded that they dropped their hands; Mitya rushed away from them, and making a trumpet of his hands shouted:

“You red-skinned Comanches! Iroquois!”

But they all went back to the puddle, and the wisest of them said:

“Colleagues, let us resume our occupation. Let us forget this boy, for he is very likely a socialist in disguise.”

Oh, Mitya, Mitya!

6 Elevenpence.—Trans.