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

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “She was standing by the wall, sir,” Lukerya told me, “close to the window. Leaning with her arm against the wall, she was, and her head pressed against her arm. Standing like that she was, sir, and thinking. And so deep in thought was she that she did not hear me open the door of the other room. She didn’t see me standing there and watching her. Then I saw her smile, sir. She was standing by the wall near the window, thinking and smiling. I looked at her, turned round quietly and went back to my kitchen. Preoccupied with my own thoughts I was, sir. Only suddenly I heard the window open. I went back at once, meaning to tell her that it was very fresh outside and that she might catch her death of cold if she wasn’t careful, and, Lord, sir, I saw she had climbed up on to the windowsill, standing there drawn up to her full height she was, in the open window, with her back to me, clasping the icon in her hands. I called out to her ‘Madam! Madam!’ and she must have heard me, sir, for she made a movement as if to turn round, but she didn’t. Took a step forward, she did, then pressed the icon to her bosom and—threw herself out of the window!”

  All I remember is that when I went into the yard, she was still warm. The horror of it was that all the time I felt those eyes staring at me. At first they shouted, then they suddenly fell silent, and all at once the crowd parted to let me through, and—there she lay with the icon. I dimly remember going up to her silently and looking at her a long time. All of them crowded round me and began saying something to me. Lukerya was there too, but I did not see her. I only remember the workman. He kept shouting at me, “A handful of blood poured out of her mouth! A handful of blood! A handful!” and pointing to the blood on a stone. I believe I touched the blood with my finger, smeared my finger, and looked at my finger (I remember that), while he kept shouting at me, “A handful! A handful!”

  “What the hell is a handful!” I yelled at him with all my might (so I’m told) and, raising my hands, rushed at him.

  Oh, the whole thing is mad! Mad! An awful misunderstanding! It’s improbable! Impossible!

  IV

  I WAS ONLY FIVE MINUTES TOO LATE

  And isn’t it? Isn’t it? Is it probable? Can one really say that it was possible? Why did this woman die? What made her do it?

  Oh, believe me, I understand. I understand everything! But why she died is still a mystery. Was she afraid of my love? Did she really ask herself seriously whether to accept it or not? And was the question too much for her and did she prefer to die? I know. I know. It’s no use my racking my brains. She had promised me too much. Given me too many promises. And she was afraid that she would not be able to keep them. That’s clear. There are a number of other facts which are simply dreadful. For there is still the unanswered question—why did she die? That question keeps hammering at my brain. I would have let her alone, if she had wanted me to let her alone. But, she did not believe it. No, she didn’t. And that was the real trouble. No, no! It’s a lie! It wasn’t that at all. It was simply that she had to be honest with me. She knew that to me “to love” meant “to love entirely,” and not as she would have loved the shopkeeper. And, being too chaste and too pure, she did not want to deceive me with a love that would have satisfied the shopkeeper. Did not want to deceive me with a love that was only half a love, or a quarter of a love. Too honest. That’s the trouble. I wanted to instil tolerance into her—remember? A curious idea.

  Another terribly interesting question is whether she respected me or not. I don’t know whether in her heart she despised me or not. I don’t believe she did. It certainly is very strange. Why didn’t it ever occur to me all the winter that she despised me? I was absolutely convinced she didn’t until that moment when she looked at me with stern surprise. Yes, stern. It was then that I knew at once that she did despise me. I knew it irrevocably. For ever! Oh, let her, let her despise me all her life, so long as she was alive—so long as she was alive! Only a few hours ago she was still walking about. She was still talking. I can’t for the life of me understand why she should have thrown herself out of the window. And how was I to have suspected it even five minutes before she did it? I’ve asked Lukerya to come in. I shall never part with Lukerya now. No, I shall never part with her. Not for anything in the world!

  Oh, I daresay we could have still found some way of patching things up. The trouble was we got so terribly estranged from one another during the winter. But couldn’t we have grown used to one another again? Why, why couldn’t we have come together again? I am generous, and so was she—that was one point we had in common! A few more words, two more days—no more—and she would have understood everything.

  What is so awful is that the whole thing was just an accident—an ordinary, horrible, senseless accident! An accident that would never have happened if I hadn’t been late. I was five minutes too late. Only five minutes! Had I come five minutes earlier, that impulse which drove her to commit suicide would have passed away like a cloud. And it would never again have occurred to her to do anything so horrible. And it would have all ended by her understanding everything. And now again empty rooms. Again I’m alone in the whole world. I can hear the pendulum ticking away. What does it care? There’s nothing it can be sorry for. I’ve no one left in the world—that’s the horror of it!

  I keep walking, walking. Always walking. I know. I know. You need not prompt me. You think it’s damned funny that I should be complaining about an accident. About being five minutes too late. An accident? But it’s as plain as a pikestaff. Just think: why didn’t she leave a note behind, just a few words to say, “Don’t blame anyone for my death,” as people always do? Is it likely that it should never have occurred to her that Lukerya might get into trouble with the police over her? “She was alone with her mistress,” people might have said, “and she could have pushed her out of the window.” She might at any rate have been dragged off to the police, blameless though she was, but for the fact that from the yard and from the windows of the next-door house four men had seen her stand with the icon in her hands and jump out of the window. But that too was an accident. I mean, that she should have been seen by some people who just happened to be about at the time. No, the whole thing was not premeditated. It was just an impulse. An unaccountable impulse. A sudden impulse. A momentary aberration. What does the fact that she had been praying in front of the icon prove? It certainly doesn’t show that she had been saying her prayers before committing suicide. The whole impulse probably lasted only about ten minutes. Her decision to do away with herself must have been taken when she was standing by the wall, her head pressed against her arm, and smiled. An idea flashed through her mind, set it in a whirl, and—she could not resist it.

  Whatever you may say, the whole thing is quite obviously a misunderstanding. I am not as bad as all that: she could have lived with me. And what if the whole thing was caused by anaemia? Simply by anaemia. By exhaustion. Utter exhaustion of all her vital energies. She got so terribly exhausted last winter. Yes. That’s what it is.

  I was too late!!!

  How thin she looks in her coffin! How sharp her little nose has grown! Her eyelashes lie as straight as arrows. And nothing was crushed in her fall. Not a bone was broken. Just that “handful of blood.” A dessert-spoonful, I suppose. Internal haemorrhage. A strange thought: what if it were possible to keep her here and not to bury her! For if they take her away.… But no! I shan’t let them! I’m damned if I’ll let them! Oh Lord, I mustn’t talk like that. Of course she’ll have to be taken away. I know that. I am not mad. I’m not raving. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been as clear-headed as I am now. But I can’t—I just can’t get used to the idea that once more there will be no one in the house, once more two rooms, and once more I shall be here by myself with the pledges. It’s mad! Mad! That’s where real madness lies. I had tortured her till she could stand it no longer. Yes, that’s what it was.

  What do I care for your laws now? What are your customs to me? Your morals, your life, your State, your faith? Let your judges judge me. Let me be bro
ught before your courts, before your public courts, and I will declare that I do not recognise anything. The judge will order me to hold my peace. “Silence, officer!” he’ll shout. And I’ll shout back at him, “What power do you possess to exact obedience from me? Why did dark insensibility destroy what was dearer to me than anything else in the world? What do I care for your laws now? I shall live my own life!” Oh, nothing makes any difference to me now!

  She is blind, blind! She is dead. She cannot hear me. Oh, you don’t know what a paradise I should have built for you! Paradise was in my soul, and I would have planted it all round you! What does it matter if you did not love me? What does that matter? Everything would have been as it was. I should have let you alone. You would have talked to me only as a friend, and we should have laughed and been happy together. We should have gazed joyfully into each other’s eyes. And so we should have lived. And even if you had fallen in love with another man, it wouldn’t have mattered a bit. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me. Fall in love if you wish! You’d have walked with him and laughed, and I’d have watched you from the other side of the street.… Oh, I don’t care what would have happened, if only she would open her eyes just once! Just for one moment. For one moment only. She would have looked at me as she did a few hours ago when she stood before me and swore to be a faithful wife to me. Oh, I’m sure she would have understood everything at a glance!

  Insensibility. Oh, nature! People are alone in the world. That’s what is so dreadful. “Is there a living man on the plain?” cries the Russian legendary hero. I, too, echo the same cry, but no one answers. They say the sun brings life to the universe. The sun will rise and—look at it. Isn’t it dead? Everything is dead. Dead men are everywhere. There are only people in the world, and all around them is silence—that’s what the earth is! “Men love one another!”—who said that? Whose commandment is it? The pendulum is ticking away unfeelingly, dismally. Two o’clock in the morning. Her dear little boots stand by her little bed, as though waiting for her.… No, seriously, when they take her away tomorrow, what’s to become of me?

  THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN

  A FANTASTIC STORY

  I

  I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me—yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn’t have minded laughing with them—not at myself, of course, but because I love them—had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they will not understand.

  And yet in the past I used to be terribly distressed at appearing to be ridiculous. No, not appearing to be, but being. I’ve always cut a ridiculous figure. I suppose I must have known it from the day I was born. At any rate, I’ve known for certain that I was ridiculous ever since I was seven years old. Afterwards I went to school, then to the university, and—well—the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person. And as during my studies, so all my life. Every year the same consciousness that I was ridiculous in every way strengthened and intensified in my mind. They always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or suspected that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anyone else that he was ridiculous, that man was I. And this—I mean, the fact that they did not know it—was the bitterest pill for me to swallow. But there I was myself at fault. I was always so proud that I never wanted to confess it to anyone. No, I wouldn’t do that for anything in the world. As the years passed, this pride increased in me so that I do believe that if ever I had by chance confessed it to any one I should have blown my brains out the same evening. Oh, how I suffered in the days of my youth from the thought that I might not myself resist the impulse to confess it to my schoolfellows. But ever since I became a man I grew for some unknown reason a little more composed in my mind, though I was more and more conscious of that awful characteristic of mine. Yes, most decidedly for some unknown reason, for to this day I have not been able to find out why that was so. Perhaps it was because I was becoming terribly disheartened owing to one circumstance which was beyond my power to control, namely, the conviction which was gaining upon me that nothing in the whole world made any difference. I had long felt it dawning upon me, but I was fully convinced of it only last year, and that, too, all of a sudden, as it were. I suddenly felt that it made no difference to me whether the world existed or whether nothing existed anywhere at all. I began to be acutely conscious that nothing existed in my own lifetime. At first I couldn’t help feeling that at any rate in the past many things had existed; but later on I came to the conclusion that there had not been anything even in the past, but that for some reason it had merely seemed to have been. Little by little I became convinced that there would be nothing in the future, either. It was then that I suddenly ceased to be angry with people and almost stopped noticing them. This indeed disclosed itself in the smallest trifles. For instance, I would knock against people while walking in the street. And not because I was lost in thought—I had nothing to think about—I had stopped thinking about anything at that time: it made no difference to me. Not that I had found an answer to all the questions. Oh, I had not settled a single question, and there were thousands of them! But it made no difference to me, and all the questions disappeared.

  And, well, it was only after that that I learnt the truth. I learnt the truth last November, on the third of November, to be precise, and every moment since then has been imprinted indelibly on my mind. It happened on a dismal evening, as dismal an evening as could be imagined. I was returning home at about eleven o’clock and I remember thinking all the time that there could not be a more dismal evening. Even the weather was foul. It had been pouring all day, and the rain too was the coldest and most dismal rain that ever was, a sort of menacing rain—I remember that—a rain with a distinct animosity towards people. But about eleven o’clock it had stopped suddenly, and a horrible dampness descended upon everything, and it became much damper and colder than when it had been raining. And a sort of steam was rising from everything, from every cobble in the street, and from every side-street if you peered closely into it from the street as far as the eye could reach. I could not help feeling that if the gaslight had been extinguished everywhere, everything would have seemed much more cheerful, and that the gaslight oppressed the heart so much just because it shed a light upon it all. I had had scarcely any dinner that day. I had been spending the whole evening with an engineer who had two more friends visiting him. I never opened my mouth, and I expect I must have got on their nerves. They were discussing some highly controversial subject, and suddenly got very excited over it. But it really did not make any difference to them. I could see that. I knew that their excitement was not genuine. So I suddenly blurted it out. “My dear fellows,” I said, “you don’t really care a damn about it, do you?” They were not in the least offended, but they all burst out laughing at me. That was because I had said it without meaning to rebuke them, but simply because it made no difference to me. Well, they realised that it made no difference to me, and they felt happy.

  When I was thinking about the gaslight in the streets, I looked up at the sky. The sky was awfully dark, but I could clearly distinguish the torn wisps of cloud and between them fathomless dark patches. All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought mysel
f an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why—I don’t know. And so every night during these two months I thought of shooting myself as I was going home. I was only waiting for the right moment. And now the little star gave me an idea, and I made up my mind then and there that it should most certainly be that night. But why the little star gave me the idea—I don’t know.

  And just as I was looking at the sky, this little girl suddenly grasped me by the elbow. The street was already deserted and there was scarcely a soul to be seen. In the distance a cabman was fast asleep on his box. The girl was about eight years old. She had a kerchief on her head, and she wore only an old, shabby little dress. She was soaked to the skin, but what stuck in my memory was her little torn wet boots. I still remember them. They caught my eye especially. She suddenly began tugging at my elbow and calling me. She was not crying, but saying something in a loud, jerky sort of voice, something that did not make sense, for she was trembling all over and her teeth were chattering from cold. She seemed to be terrified of something and she was crying desperately, “Mummy! Mummy!” I turned round to look at her, but did not utter a word and went on walking. But she ran after me and kept tugging at my clothes, and there was a sound in her voice which in very frightened children signifies despair. I know that sound. Though her words sounded as if they were choking her, I realised that her mother must be dying somewhere very near, or that something similar was happening to her, and that she had run out to call someone, to find someone who would help her mother. But I did not go with her; on the contrary, something made me drive her away. At first I told her to go and find a policeman. But she suddenly clasped her hands and, whimpering and gasping for breath, kept running at my side and would not leave me. It was then that I stamped my foot and shouted at her. She just cried, “Sir! Sir!…” and then she left me suddenly and rushed headlong across the road: another man appeared there and she evidently rushed from me to him.