“Marie . . . you know . . . you are very tired, perhaps, for God’s sake, don’t be angry. ... If you’d consent to have some tea, for instance, eh? Tea picks one up so, doesn’t it? If you’d consent!”
“Why talk about consenting! Of course I consent, what a baby you are still. Get me some if you can. How cramped you are here. How cold it is!”
“Oh, I’ll get some logs for the fire directly, some logs . . . I’ve got logs.” Shatov was all astir. “Logs . . . that is . . . but I’ll get tea directly,” he waved his hand as though with desperate determination and snatched up his cap.
“Where are you going? So you’ve no tea in the house?”
“There shall be, there shall be, there shall be, there shall be everything directly. ... I ..,” he took his revolver from the shelf, “I’ll sell this revolver directly . . . or pawn it. . . .”
“What foolishness and what a time that will take! Take my money if you’ve nothing, there’s eighty kopecks here, I think; that’s all I have. This is like a madhouse.”
“I don’t want your money, I don’t want it I’ll be here directly, in one instant. I can manage without the revolver. . . .”
And he rushed straight to Kirillov’s. This was probably two hours before the visit of Pyotr Stepanovitch and Liputin to Kirillov. Though Shatov and Kirillov lived in the same yard they hardly ever saw each other, and when they met they did not nod or speak: they had been too long “lying side by side” in America....
“Kirillov, you always have tea; have you got tea and a
samovar?”
Kirillov, who was walking up and down the room, as he was in the habit of doing all night, stopped and looked intently at his hurried visitor, though without much surprise.
“I’ve got tea and sugar and a samovar. But there’s no need of the samovar, the tea is hot. Sit down and simply drink it.”
“Kirillov, we lay side by side in America. . . . My wife has come to me ... I ... give me the tea. ... I shall want the samovar.”
“If your wife is here you want the samovar. But take it later. I’ve two. And now take the teapot from the table. It’s hot, boiling hot. Take everything, take the sugar, all of it. Bread . . . there’s plenty of bread; all of it. There’s some veal. I’ve a rouble.”
“Give it me, friend, I’ll pay it back to-morrow! Ach, Kirillov!”
“Is it the same wife who was in Switzerland? That’s a good thing. And your running in like this, that’s a good thing too.”
“Kirillov!” cried Shatov, taking the teapot under his arm and carrying the bread and sugar in both hands. “Kirillov, if ... if you could get rid of your dreadful fancies and give up your atheistic ravings ... oh, what a man you’d be, Kirillov!”
“One can see you love your wife after Switzerland. It’s a good thing you do — after Switzerland. When you want tea, come again. You can come all night, I don’t sleep at all. There’ll be a samovar. Take the rouble, here it is. Go to your wife, I’ll stay here and think about you and your wife.”
Marya Shatov was unmistakably pleased at her husband’s haste and fell upon the tea almost greedily, but there was no need to run for the samovar; she drank only half a cup and swallowed a tiny piece of bread. The veal she refused with disgust and irritation.
“You are ill, Marie, all this is a sign of illness,” Shatov remarked timidly as he waited upon her.
“Of course I’m ill, please sit down. Where did you get the tea if you haven’t any?”
Shatov told her about Kirillov briefly. She had heard something of him.
“I know he is mad; say no more, please; ‘there are plenty of fools. So you’ve been in America? I heard, you wrote.”
“Yes, I ... I wrote to you in Paris.”
“Enough, please talk of something else. Are you a Slavophil in your convictions?”
“I . . .1 am not exactly. . . . Since I cannot be a Russian, I became a Slavophil.” He smiled a wry smile with the effort of one who feels he has made a strained and inappropriate jest.
“Why, aren’t you a Russian?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, that’s all foolishness. Do sit down, I entreat you. Why are you all over the place? Do you think I am lightheaded? Perhaps I shall be. You say there are only you two in the house.”
“Yes. . . . Downstairs . . .”
“And both such clever people. What is there downstairs? You said downstairs?”
“No, nothing.”
“Why nothing? I want to know.”
“I only meant to say that now we are only two in the yard, but that the Lebyadkins used to live downstairs. ...”
“That woman who was murdered last night?” she started suddenly. “I heard of it. I heard of it as soon as I arrived. There was a fire here, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, Marie, yes, and perhaps I am doing a scoundrelly thing this moment in forgiving the scoundrels. ...” He stood up suddenly and paced about the room, raising his arms as though in a frenzy.
But Marie had not quite understood him. She heard his answers inattentively; she asked questions but did not listen.
“Fine things are being done among you! Oh, how contemptible it all is! What scoundrels men all are! But do sit down, I beg you, oh, how you exasperate me!” and she let her head sink on the pillow, exhausted.
“Marie, I won’t. . . . Perhaps you’ll lie down, Marie?” She made no answer and closed her eyes helplessly. Her pale face looked death-like. She fell asleep almost instantly. Shatov looked round, snuffed the candle, looked uneasily at her face once, more, pressed his hands tight in front of him and walked on tiptoe out of the room into the passage. At the top of the stairs he stood in the corner with his face to the wall and remained so for ten minutes without sound or movement. He would have stood there longer, but he suddenly caught the sound of soft cautious steps below. Some one was coming up the stairs. Shatov remembered he had forgotten to fasten the gate.
“Who’s there?” he asked in a whisper. The unknown visitor went on slowly mounting the stairs without answering. When he reached the top he stood still; it was impossible to see his face in the dark; suddenly Shatov heard the cautious question:
“Ivan Shatov?”
Shatov said who he was, but at once held out his hand to check his advance. The latter took his hand, and Shatov shuddered as though he had touched some terrible reptile.
“Stand here,” he whispered quickly. “Don’t go in, I can’t receive you just now. My wife has come back. I’ll fetch the candle.”
When he returned with the candle he found a young officer standing there; he did not know his name but he had seen him before.
“Erkel,” said the lad, introducing himself. “You’ve seen me at Virginsky’s.”
“I remember; you sat writing. Listen,” said Shatov in sudden excitement, going up to him frantically, but still talking in a whisper. “You gave me a sign just now when you took my hand. But you know I can treat all these signals with contempt! I don’t acknowledge them. . . . I don’t want them. .. . I can throw you downstairs this minute, do you know that?”
“No, I know nothing about that and I don’t know what you are in such a rage about,” the visitor answered without malice and almost ingenuously. “I have only to give you a message, and that’s what I’ve come for, being particularly anxious not to lose time. You have a printing press which does not belong to you, and of which you are bound to give an account, as you know yourself. I have received instructions to request you to give it up to-morrow at seven o’clock in the evening to Liputin. I have been instructed to tell you also that nothing more will be asked of you.”
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing. Your request is granted, and you are struck off our list. I was instructed to tell you that positively.”
“Who instructed you to tell me?”
“Those who told me the sign.”
“Have you come from abroad?”
“I ... I think that’s no matter to you.”
/> “Oh, hang it! Why didn’t you come before if you were told to?”
“I followed certain instructions and was not alone.”
“I understand, I understand that you were not alone. Eh . . . hang it! But why didn’t Liputin come himself?”
“So I shall come for you to-morrow at exactly six o’clock in the evening, and we’ll go there on foot. There will be no one there but us three.”
“Will Verhovensky be there?”
“No, he won’t. Verhovensky is leaving the town at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“Just what I thought!” Shatov whispered furiously, and he struck his fist on his hip. “He’s run off, the sneak!”
He sank into agitated reflection. Erkel looked intently at him and waited in silence.
“But how will you take it? You can’t simply pick it up in your hands and carry it.”
“There will be no need to. You’ll simply point out the place and we’ll just make sure that it really is buried there. We only know whereabouts the place is, we don’t know the place itself. And have you pointed the place out to anyone else yet?” Shatov looked at him.
“You, you, a chit of a boy like you, a silly boy like you, you too have got caught in that net like a sheep? Yes, that’s just the young blood they want! Well, go along. E-ech! that scoundrel’s taken you all in and run away.”
Erkel looked at him serenely and calmly but did not seem to understand.
“Verhovensky, Verhovensky has run away!” Shatov growled fiercely.
“But he is still here, he is not gone away. He is not going till to-morrow,” Erkel observed softly and persuasively. “I particularly begged him to be present as a witness; my instructions all referred to him (he explained frankly like a young and inexperienced boy). But I regret to say he did not agree on the ground of his departure, and he really is in a hurry.”
Shatov glanced compassionately at the simple youth again, but suddenly gave a gesture of despair as though he thought “they are not worth pitying.”
“All right, I’ll come,” he cut him short. “And now get away, be off.”
“So I’ll come for you at six o’clock punctually.” Erkel made a courteous bow and walked deliberately downstairs.
“Little fool!” Shatov could not help shouting after him from the top.
“What is it?” responded the lad from the bottom.
“Nothing, you can go.”
“I thought you said something.”
II
Erkel was a “little fool” who was only lacking in the higher form of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty — even to the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to “the cause” or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job of messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten minutes.
A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow, unreflecting nature, which was for ever yearning to follow the lead of another man’s will, of course for the good of “the common” or “the great” cause. Not that that made any difference, for little fanatics like Erkel can never imagine serving a cause except by identifying it with the person who, to their minds, is the expression of it. The sensitive, affectionate and kind-hearted Erkel was perhaps the most callous of Shatov’s would-be murderers, and, though he had no personal spite against him, he would have been present at his murder without-the quiver of an eyelid. He had been instructed; for instance, to have a good look at Shatov’s surroundings while carrying out his commission, and when Shatov, receiving him at the top of the stairs, blurted out to him, probably unaware in the heat of the moment, that his wife had come back to him — Erkel had the instinctive cunning to avoid displaying the slightest curiosity, though the idea flashed through his mind that the fact of his wife’s return was of great importance for the success of their undertaking.
And so it was in reality; it was only that fact that saved the “scoundrels” from Shatov’s carrying out his intention, and at the same time helped them “to get rid of him.” To begin with, it agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with such different considerations. On the contrary, he eagerly believed that Pyotr Verhovensky was running away the next day: it fell in exactly with his suspicions! Returning to the room he sat down again in a corner, leaned his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Bitter thoughts tormented him. . . .
Then he would raise his head again and go on tiptoe to look at her. “Good God! she will be in a fever by to-morrow morning; perhaps it’s begun already! She must have caught cold. She is not accustomed to this awful climate, and then a third-class carriage, the storm, the rain, and she has such a thin little pelisse, no wrap at all. . . . And to leave her like this, to abandon her in her helplessness! Her bag, too, her bag — what a tiny, light thing, all crumpled up, scarcely weighs ten pounds! Poor thing, how worn out she is, how much she’s been through! She is proud, that’s why she won’t complain. But she is irritable, very irritable. It’s illness; an angel will grow irritable in illness. What a dry forehead, it must be hot — how dark she is under the eyes, and . . . and yet how beautiful the oval of her face is and her rich hair, how ...”
And he made haste to turn away his eyes, to walk away as though he were frightened at the very idea of seeing in her anything but an unhappy, exhausted fellow-creature who needed help—” how could he think of hopes, oh, how mean, how base is man!” And he would go back to his corner, sit down, hide his face in his hands and again sink into dreams and reminiscences . . . and again he was haunted by hopes.
“Oh, I am tired, I am tired,” he remembered her exclamations, her weak broken voice. “Good God! Abandon her now, and she has only eighty kopecks; she held out her purse, a tiny old thing! She’s come to look for a job. What does she know about jobs? What do they know about Russia? Why, they are like naughty children, they’ve nothing but their own fancies made up by themselves, and she is angry, poor thing, that Russia is not like their foreign dreams! The luckless, innocent creatures! . . . It’s really cold here, though.”
He remembered that she had complained, that he had promised to heat the stove. “There are logs here, I can fetch them if only I don’t wake her. But I can do it without waking her. But what shall I do about the veal? When she gets up perhaps she will be hungry. . . . Well, that will do later: Kirillov doesn’t go to bed all night. What could I cover her with, she is sleeping so soundly, but she must be cold, ah, she must be cold!” And once more he went to look at her; her dress had worked up a little and her right leg was half uncovered to the knee. He suddenly turned away almost in dismay, took off his warm overcoat, and, remaining in his wretched old jacket, covered it up, trying not to look at it.
A great deal of time was spent in righting the fire, stepping about on tiptoe, looking at the sleeping woman, dreaming in the corner, then looking at her again. Two or three hours had passed. During that time Verhovensky and Liputin had been at Kirillov’s. At last he, too, began to doze in the corner. He heard her groan; she waked up and called him; he jumped up like a criminal.
“Marie, I was dropping asleep.’ . . . Ah, what a wretch I am, Marie!”
She sat up, looking about her with wonder, seeming not to recognise where she was, and suddenly leapt up in indignation and anger.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 421