The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (Modern Library Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “To save you!” I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down the room in front of her. “Save you from what? Why, I’m probably much worse than you. Why didn’t you throw it in my teeth when I was reading that lecture to you? ‘But why did you come to us yourself? To read me a lecture on morality?’ I wanted power. Power was what I wanted then. I wanted sport. I wanted to see you cry. I wanted to humiliate you. To make you hysterical. That’s what I wanted. I couldn’t keep it up because I’m nothing but a rag myself. I got frightened, and I’m damned if I know why I told you where I lived. I was a bloody fool. That’s why, I suppose. So even before I got home that night I was cursing and swearing at you for having given you my address. I hated you already because of the lies I had been telling you. For all I wanted was to make a few fine speeches, to have something to dream about. And do you know what I really wanted? What I wanted was that you should all go to hell! That’s what I wanted. The thing I must have at any cost is peace of mind. To get that peace of mind, to make sure that no one worried me, I’d sell the whole world for a farthing. Is the world to go to rack and ruin or am I to have my cup of tea? Well, so far as I’m concerned, blow the world so long as I can have my cup of tea. Did you know that, or didn’t you? Well, anyway, I know I’m a blackguard, a cad, an egoist, a loafer. Here I’ve been shivering in a fever for the last three days for fear that you might come. And do you know what I was so worried about in particular during those three days? I’ll tell you. What I was so worried about was that I was making myself out to be such a hero before you and that you’d find me here in this torn old dressing gown of mine, poor and loathsome. Only a few minutes ago I told you that I was not ashamed of my poverty. Well, it’s not true. I am ashamed of my poverty. I’m ashamed of it more than of anything. I’m afraid of it more than of anything, more than of being a thief, because I’m so confoundedly vain that at times I feel as though I had been skinned and every puff of air hurt me. Don’t you realise now that I shall never forgive you for having found me in this tattered old dressing gown and just when, like a spiteful cur, I flew at Apollon’s throat? Your saviour, your former hero, flings himself like some mangy, shaggy mongrel on his valet, and his valet is laughing at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears which I was shedding before you a minute ago, like some silly old woman who had been put to shame. Nor shall I ever forgive you for what I’m now confessing to you! Yes, you alone must answer for it all because you just happened to come at that moment, because I’m a rotter, because I’m the most horrible, the most ridiculous, the most petty, the most stupid, the most envious of all the worms on earth who are not a bit better than me, but who—I’m damned if I know why—are never ashamed or embarrassed, while I shall be insulted all my life by every louse because that’s the sort of fellow I am! And what the hell do I care if you don’t understand what I’m talking about? And what the hell do I care what happens to you? Whether you’re going to rack and ruin there or not? And do you realise that now that I’ve told you all this I shall hate you for having been here and listened to me? Why, it’s only once in a lifetime that a man speaks his mind like this, and that, too, when he is in hysterics. What more do you want? Why after all this do you still stand here before me torturing me? Why don’t you get out of here?”

  But here a very odd thing happened.

  I was so used to imagining everything and to thinking of everything as it happened in books, and to picturing to myself everything in the world as I had previously made it up in my dreams, that at first I could not all at once grasp the meaning of this occurrence. What occurred was this: Lisa, humiliated and crushed by me, understood much more than I imagined. She understood from all this what a woman who loves sincerely always understands first of all, namely, that I was unhappy.

  The frightened and resentful look on her face first gave place to one of sorrowful astonishment. But when I began to call myself a cad and a blackguard and my tears began to flow (I had spoken the whole of that tirade with tears), her whole face began to work convulsively. She was about to get up and stop me, and when I finished, it was not my cries of why she was here and why she did not go away to which she paid attention; what she felt was that I must have found it very hard indeed to say all this. And besides, she was so crushed, poor girl. She considered herself so inferior to me. Why should she feel angry or offended? She suddenly jumped up from her chair with a kind of irresistible impulse and, all drawn towards me but still feeling very shy and not daring to move from her place, held out her hands to me.… It was here that my heart failed me. Then she rushed to me, flung her arms round my neck, and burst into tears. I could not restrain myself, either, and burst out sobbing as I had never in my life sobbed before.…

  “They—they won’t let me—I—I can’t be good!” I could hardly bring myself to say, then I stumbled to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and for a quarter of an hour sobbed hysterically. She clung to me, put her arms round me, and seemed to remain frozen in that embrace.

  But the trouble was that my hysterical fit could not go on for ever. And so (it is the loathsome truth I am writing), lying prone on the sofa, clinging tightly to it, and my face buried in my cheap leather cushion, I began gradually, remotely, involuntarily but irresistibly to feel that I should look an awful ass if I raised my head now and looked Lisa straight in the face. What was I ashamed of? I don’t know. All I know is that I was ashamed. It also occurred to me just then, overwrought as I was, that our parts were now completely changed, that she was the heroine now, while I was exactly the same crushed and humiliated creature as she had appeared to me that night—four days before.… And all this flashed through my mind while I was still lying prone on the sofa!

  Good God, was I really envious of her then?

  I don’t know. To this day I cannot possibly say whether I was envious of her or not, and at the time of course I was less able to understand it than now. I cannot live without feeling that I have someone completely in my power, that I am free to tyrannise over some human being. But—you can’t explain anything by reasoning and consequently it is useless to reason.

  I soon pulled myself together, however, and raised my head; I had to do it sooner or later.… And, well, to this day I can’t help thinking that it was because I was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled and blazed up in my heart—a feeling of domination and possession! My eyes flashed with passion and I clasped her hands violently. How I hated her and how I was drawn to her at that moment! One feeling intensified the other. This was almost like vengeance!… At first she looked bewildered and even frightened, but only for one moment. She embraced me warmly and rapturously.

  X

  A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in furious impatience. Every minute I walked up to the screen and looked through the narrow slit at Lisa. She was sitting on the floor, her head leaning against the edge of the bed, and, I suppose, was crying. But she did not go away, and that irritated me. This time she knew everything. I had insulted her finally, but—there is no need to speak about it. She guessed that my outburst of passion was nothing but revenge, a fresh insult for her, and that to my earlier, almost aimless, hatred, there was now added a personal, jealous hatred of her.… However, I can’t be certain that she did understand it all so clearly; what she certainly did understand was that I was a loathsome man and that, above all, I was incapable of loving her.

  I know I shall be told that it is incredible—that it is incredible that anyone could be as spiteful and as stupid as I was; and I daresay it will be added that it was improbable that I should not love her or, at any rate, appreciate her love. But why is it improbable? First of all, I could not possibly have loved anyone because, I repeat, to me love meant to tyrannise and to be morally superior. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and I have reached the point that sometimes I cannot help thinking even now that love only consists in the right to tyrannise over the woman you love, who grants you
this right of her own free will. Even in my most secret dreams I could not imagine love except as a struggle, and I always embarked on it with hatred and ended it with moral subjugation, and afterwards I did not have the faintest idea what to do with the woman I had subjugated. And indeed what is there improbable about it when I had at last reached such a state of moral depravity, when I had lost touch so much with “real life,” that only a few hours before I had thought of reproaching her for having come to me to listen to “pathetic speeches,” and did not even guess that she had not come to listen to my pathetic speeches at all, but to love me, for it is only in love that a woman can find her true resurrection, her true salvation from any sort of calamity, and her moral regeneration, and she cannot possibly find it in anything else. Still, I did not hate her so much after all when I was pacing the room and looked at her through the chink in the screen. I merely felt unbearably distressed at her being there. I wanted her to disappear. I longed for “peace.” I wanted to be left alone in my funk-hole. “Real life”—so unaccustomed was I to it—had crushed me so much that I found it difficult to breathe.

  But a few minutes passed and still she did not get up, as though she were unconscious. I had the meanness to knock quietly at the screen to remind her.… She gave a start, got up quickly, and began looking for her kerchief, her hat, her fur coat, as though her only thought were how to run away from me as quickly as possible.…

  Two minutes later she came out slowly from behind the screen and looked hard at me. I grinned maliciously, though I must confess I had to force myself to do it, for the sake of appearances, and turned away from her gaze.

  “Goodbye,” she said, going to the door.

  I ran up to her suddenly, seized her hand, opened it, put something in it and—closed it again. Then I turned at once and rushed away quickly to the other corner of the room so as not to see her at least.

  I almost told a lie this very minute. I was about to write that I did not do it deliberately, that I did it because I did not realise what I was doing, having in my folly completely lost my head. But I don’t want to lie, and therefore I say frankly that I opened her hand and put something in it—out of spite. The thought came into my head when I was running up and down the room and she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say in all truth: I did that cruel thing deliberately, I did it not because my heart, but because my wicked brain prompted me to do it. This cruelty was so insincere, so much thought out, so deliberately invented, so bookish, that I couldn’t stand it myself even for a minute, but first rushed away to a corner so as not to see anything, and then, overwhelmed with shame and despair, rushed after Lisa. I opened the front door and began listening.

  “Lisa! Lisa!” I cried down the stairs, but in a halting voice, in an undertone.

  There was no answer, but I thought I heard her footsteps lower down on the stairs.

  “Lisa!” I called in a louder voice.

  No answer. But at that moment I heard the heavy glass street-door open with a creak and with difficulty and slam heavily. The noise reverberated on the stairs.

  She was gone. I returned musing to my room, feeling terribly ill at ease.

  I stopped at the table beside the chair on which she had sat and looked disconsolately before me. A minute passed. Suddenly I gave a start: straight before me on the table I saw a crumpled blue five-rouble note, the same which a minute before I had pressed into her hand. It was the same note. It could be no other, for there was no other in the house. She therefore had just enough time to fling it on the table at the moment when I rushed to the other end of the room.

  Well, of course, I might have expected it of her. Might have expected it? No, I was too great an egoist, I had too little respect for people to have been able even to imagine that she would do it. That was too much. That I could not bear. A moment later I began to dress madly, putting on hurriedly whatever clothes I could lay my hands on, and rushed headlong after her. She had hardly had time to walk more than a hundred yards when I ran out into the street.

  The street was quiet and deserted. It was snowing heavily, the snowflakes falling almost perpendicularly and piling up in deep drifts on the pavement and on the empty road. There was not a soul to be seen, not a sound to be heard. The street-lamps twinkled desolately and uselessly. I ran about a hundred yards to the cross-roads and stopped.

  Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?

  Why? To fall on my knees before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet, to beseech her to forgive me! I wanted to do so, my breast was being torn to pieces, and never, never shall I be able to recall that moment with indifference. But—why? I could not help thinking. Would I not hate her fiercely tomorrow perhaps just because I had been kissing her feet today? Could I make her happy? Had I not learnt today for the hundredth time what I was really worth? Should I not torture her to death?

  I stood in the snow, peering into the dim haze, and thought of that.

  “And will it not be better, will it not be much better,” I thought afterwards at home, giving full rein to my imagination and suppressing the living pain in my heart, “will it not be much better that she should now carry that insult away with her for ever? What is an insult but a sort of purification? It is the most corrosive and painful form of consciousness! Tomorrow I should have bespattered her soul with mud, I should have wearied her heart by thrusting myself upon her, while now the memory of the insult will never die in her, and however horrible the filth that lies in store for her, the memory of that humiliation will raise her and purify her—by hatred, and, well, perhaps also by forgiveness. Still, will that make things easier for her?”

  And, really, here am I already putting the idle question to myself—which is better: cheap happiness or exalted suffering? Well, which is better?

  So I went on dreaming as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain in my heart. Never before had I endured such suffering and remorse. But didn’t I know perfectly well when I ran out of my flat that I should turn back half-way? I never met Lisa again, and have heard nothing of her. I may as well add that I remained for a long time pleased with the phrase about the usefulness of insults and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill at the time from blank despair.

  Even now, after all these years, I somehow feel unhappy to recall all this. Lots of things make me unhappy now when I recall them, but—why not finish my “memoirs” at this point? I can’t help thinking that I made a mistake in starting to write them. At any rate, I have felt ashamed all the time I have been writing this story: so it seems this is no longer literature, but a corrective punishment. For to tell long stories and how I have, for instance, spoilt my life by a moral disintegration in my funk-hole, by my unsociable habits, by losing touch with life, and by nursing my spite in my dark cellar—all this, I’m afraid, is not interesting. A novel must have a hero, and here I seemed to have deliberately gathered together all the characteristics of an anti-hero, and, above all, all this is certain to produce a most unpleasant impression because we have all lost touch with life, we are all cripples, every one of us—more or less. We have lost touch so much that occasionally we cannot help feeling a sort of disgust with “real life,” and that is why we are so angry when people remind us of it. Why, we have gone so far that we look upon “real life” almost as a sort of burden, and we are all agreed that “life” as we find it in books is much better. And why do we make such a fuss sometimes? Why do we make fools of ourselves? What do we want? We don’t know ourselves. For as a matter of fact we should fare much worse if our nonsensical prayers were granted. Why, just try, just give us, for instance, more independence, untie the hands of any one of us, widen the sphere of our activities, relax discipline, and we—yes, I assure you—we should immediately be begging for the discipline to be reimposed upon us. I know that very likely you will be angry with me for saying this, that you will start shouting and stamping, “Speak for yourself and for your miserable life in that dark cellar of yours and don’t
you dare to say ‘all of us.’ ” But, good Lord, gentlemen, I’m not trying to justify myself by this all-of-usness. For my part, I have merely carried to extremes in my life what you have not dared to carry even half-way, and, in addition, you have mistaken your cowardice for common sense and have found comfort in that, deceiving yourselves. So that, as a matter of fact, I seem to be much more alive than you. Come, look into it more closely! Why, we do not even know where we are to find real life, or what it is, or what it is called. Leave us alone without any books, and we shall at once get confused, lose ourselves in a maze, we shall not know what to cling to, what to hold on to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We even find it hard to be men, men of real flesh and blood, our own flesh and blood. We are ashamed of it. We think it a disgrace. And we do our best to be some theoretical “average” men. We are stillborn, and for a long time we have been begotten not by living fathers, and that’s just what we seem to like more and more. We are getting a taste for it. Soon we shall invent some way of being somehow or other begotten by an idea. But enough—I don’t want to write any more “from a Dark Cellar.…”

  (This is not, by the way, the end of the “Memoirs” of this paradoxical fellow. He could not resist and went on and on. But it seems to us, too, that we may stop here.)

  *Both the author of the Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictitious. Nevertheless, such persons as the author of such memoirs not only may, but must, exist in our society, if we take into consideration the circumstances which led to the formation of our society. It was my intention to bring before our reading public, more conspicuously than is usually done, one of the characters of our recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation that is still with us. In this extract, entitled Underground, this person introduces himself and his views and, as it were, tries to explain those causes which have not only led, but also were bound to lead, to his appearance in our midst. In the subsequent extract (Apropos of the Wet Snow) we shall reproduce this person’s Notes proper, dealing with certain events of his life.