II
ON THIS NINETEENTH day of the month, I took one more “step.”
For the first time since my arrival, I had money in my pocket, because my sixty roubles, which I had saved up over two years, I had given to my mother, as I mentioned above; but several days earlier I had resolved that, on the day I got my salary, I would make a “test ” I had long been dreaming of. Just the day before, I had cut out an address from a newspaper—an announcement by “the bailiff of the St. Petersburg Civil Court,” and so on and so forth, that “on the nineteenth of September instant, at twelve noon, in the Kazan quarter, such-and-such precinct, etc., etc., at house number whatever, the sale of the movable property of Mrs. Lebrecht will take place,” and that “the description, value, and property itself can be seen on the day of the sale,” etc., etc.
It was just past one o’clock. I hurried on foot to the address. It was over two years since I’d taken a cab—I gave my word (otherwise I wouldn’t have saved sixty roubles). I never went to auctions, I couldn’t afford it yet; and though my present “step” was only tentative, even this step I had resolved to resort to only when I had finished school, when I had broken with everyone, when I had shrunk into my shell and become completely free. True, I was still far from being in a “shell” and far from being free; but I resolved to take the step only as a test—just so, in order to see, almost to dream a little, as it were, and then perhaps not to come for a long time, until it was a serious beginning. For everyone else it was only a small, stupid little auction, but for me it was the first log for the ship in which Columbus went to discover America. Those were my feelings at the time.
Reaching the place, I went into the courtyard indicated on the announcement, and entered Mrs. Lebrecht’s apartment. The apartment consisted of a front hall and four not very big, not very highceilinged rooms. In the first room beyond the hall there was a crowd of up to thirty people, of whom half were buyers and the rest, judging by their looks, were either curious, or amateurs, or sent from Mrs. Lebrecht; there were both merchants and Jews, who had their eye on the gold things, and there were several people dressed “properly.” Even the physiognomies of some of these gentlemen are imprinted on my memory. In the room to the right, in the open doorway, a table had been placed squarely between the doorposts, so that it was impossible to enter that room: the objects being perquisitioned and sold were there. To the left was another room, but the doors to it were closed, though they kept opening every moment by a little crack, through which someone could be seen peeking out—it must have been one of Mrs. Lebrecht’s numerous family, who naturally felt very ashamed at the moment. At the table between the doors, facing the public, Mr. Bailiff sat on a chair, wearing a badge, and carried out the sale of the objects. I found the business almost half over already; as soon as I entered, I made my way through the crowd to the table. Bronze candlesticks were being sold. I began to look.
I looked and at once began to think: what can I buy here? And what was I going to do right now with bronze candlesticks, and would I achieve my goal, and was this how things were done, and would my calculation succeed? And wasn’t my calculation childish? I thought of all this and waited. It was the same sort of sensation as at the gambling table, at the moment when you haven’t played a card yet, but have come over with the intention of playing: “I’ll play if I want, and I’ll leave if I want—it’s my choice.” Your heart isn’t pounding yet, but somehow hesitates and thrills slightly—a sensation not without pleasure. But indecision quickly begins to weigh you down, and you somehow turn blind: you reach out, you take a card, but mechanically, almost against your will, as if someone else was guiding your hand; finally you make up your mind and play—here the sensation is quite different, tremendous. I’m writing not about the auction, but only about myself: who else would have a pounding heart at an auction?
There were some who got excited, there were some who kept silent and bided their time, there were some who bought and regretted it. I felt no pity at all for a gentleman who, by mistake, having misheard, bought a nickel silver pitcher instead of a silver one, for five roubles instead of two; I even began to feel rather merry. The bailiff varied the objects: after the candlesticks came earrings, after the earrings, an embroidered morocco pillow, followed by a box—probably for the sake of diversity or in line with the buyers’ demands. I didn’t even hold out for ten minutes, was tending towards the pillow, then towards the box, but each time I stopped at the decisive moment: the objects seemed quite impossible to me. Finally, an album turned up in the bailiff’s hands.
“A family album, bound in red morocco, worn, with drawings in watercolor and ink, in a carved ivory case with silver clasps—the starting price is two roubles!”
I went up: the object looked refined, but there was a flaw in one place in the ivory carving. I was the only one who went up, everybody was silent; there were no competitors. I could have unfastened the clasps and taken the album out of the case to examine it, but I didn’t exercise my right and only waved a trembling hand, as if to say: “It makes no difference.”
“Two roubles, five kopecks,” I said, again, I believe, with chattering teeth.
It fell to me. I took out the money at once, paid, snatched the album, and went into a corner of the room; there I took it out of the case and feverishly, hurriedly, began to examine it: excepting the case, it was the trashiest thing in the world—a little album the size of small-format letter paper, thin, with worn gilt edges—exactly the kind that girls used to start keeping in the old days, as soon as they left the institute. Temples on hills, cupids, a pond with swans floating on it, were drawn in watercolors and ink; there were verses:
I am setting out for far away,
I am leaving Moscow for many a day,
To all my dear ones I say good-bye,
By stagecoach to the Crimee I fly.
(They’ve been preserved in my memory!) I decided that I had “failed”; if there was anything nobody needed, this was precisely it.
“Never mind,” I decided, “you always lose on the first card; it’s even a good omen.”
I was decidedly cheerful.
“Ah, I’m too late! It’s yours? Did you acquire it?” I suddenly heard beside me the voice of a gentleman in a dark blue coat, well dressed and of an imposing air. He was too late.
“I’m too late. Ah, what a pity! How much?”
“Two roubles, five kopecks.”
“Ah, what a pity! Won’t you let me have it?”
“Let’s step out,” I whispered to him, my heart skipping a beat.
We went out to the stairway.
“I’ll let you have it for ten roubles,” I said, feeling a chill in my spine.
“Ten roubles! Good heavens, how can you!”
“As you wish.”
He stared wide-eyed at me; I was well dressed, in no way resembled a Jew or a retailer.
“Merciful heavens, it’s a trashy old album, who needs it? The case is in fact quite worthless, you won’t sell it to anybody.”
“You want to buy it.”
“But mine is a special case, I found out only yesterday, I’m the only one like that! Good heavens, how can you!”
“I should have asked twenty-five roubles; but since there was a risk that you’d let it go, I asked only ten so as to be sure. I won’t go down even a kopeck.”
I turned and walked away.
“Take four roubles,” he overtook me in the courtyard, “or make it five.”
I said nothing and walked on.
“All right, here!” He took out ten roubles, and I gave him the album.
“But you must agree it’s dishonest! Two roubles and ten—eh?”
“Why dishonest? It’s the market!”
“What kind of market is this?” (He was angry.)
“Where there’s demand, there’s the market. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have been able to sell it for forty kopecks.”
Though I wasn’t laughing out loud and looked serious, I
did laugh my head off inwardly, not really with delight, but I don’t know why myself, slightly out of breath.
“Listen,” I murmured quite irrepressibly, but amiably and loving him terribly, “listen: when James Rothschild,13 the late one, in Paris, the one who left seventeen hundred million francs” (the man nodded), “while still a young man, when he chanced to learn a few hours ahead of everybody else about the murder of the Duke of Berry, he rushed off at once to inform the right people, and with that one trick, in one instant, made several million—that’s the way to do it!”
“So you’re Rothschild, are you?” he shouted at me indignantly, as at a fool.
I quickly left the house. One step—and I’d made seven roubles, ninety-five kopecks! The step was meaningless, child’s play, I agree, but even so it coincided with my thought and couldn’t help stirring me extremely deeply . . . However, there’s no point in describing feelings. The ten-rouble bill was in my waistcoat pocket, I stuck two fingers in to feel it—and walked along that way, without taking my hand out. Having gone about a hundred steps down the street, I took it out to look at it, looked, and wanted to kiss it. A carriage suddenly clattered at the porch of a house; the doorkeeper opened the door, and a lady came out of the house to get into the carriage, magnificent, young, beautiful, rich, in silk and velvet, with a fivefoot train. Suddenly a pretty little pocketbook dropped from her hand and fell on the ground; she got in; the valet bent down to pick up the little thing, but I ran over quickly, picked it up, and handed it to the lady, tipping my hat. (It was a top hat, I was dressed like a young gentleman, not so badly.) With restraint, but smiling most pleasantly, the lady said to me, “Merci , m’sieu.” The carriage clattered off. I kissed the ten-rouble bill.
III
THAT SAME DAY I had to see Efim Zverev, one of my former high-school comrades, who had dropped out of school and enrolled in some specialized higher institute in Petersburg. He himself is not worth describing, and in fact I wasn’t friends with him; but I had looked him up in Petersburg; he could (owing to various circumstances that are also not worth talking about) tell me the address of a certain Kraft, a man I needed very much, once he came back from Vilno. Zverev expected him precisely that day or the next, and had informed me of it two days before. I had to walk to the Petersburg side, but I wasn’t tired at all.
I found Zverev (who was also about nineteen years old) in the courtyard of his aunt’s house, where he was living temporarily. He had just had dinner and was walking around the courtyard on stilts; he informed me at once that Kraft had arrived the day before and stopped off at his former apartment, also there on the Petersburg side, and that he wished to see me himself as soon as possible, to inform me immediately of something necessary.
“He’s going away again,” Efim added.
Since in my present circumstances it was of capital importance for me to see Kraft, I asked Efim to take me at once to his apartment, which turned out to be two steps away in a lane. But Zverev declared that he had met Kraft an hour before and that he had gone to see Dergachev.14
“So let’s go to Dergachev’s, why do you keep making excuses—are you scared?”
Indeed, Kraft might spend a long time at Dergachev’s, and then where was I to wait for him? I wasn’t scared of going to Dergachev’s, but I didn’t want to, though this was already the third time Efim tried to drag me there. And this “scared” he always pronounced with the nastiest smile on my score. It wasn’t a matter of being scared, I declare beforehand, and if I was afraid, it was of something quite different. This time I decided to go; it was also just two steps away. As we went, I asked Efim whether he still intended to run away to America.
“I may wait a little,” he answered with a slight laugh.
I didn’t much like him, I even didn’t like him at all. His hair was very blond, he had a full, much too white face, even indecently white, to the point of infantility, and he was even taller than I, but you wouldn’t have taken him for more than seventeen years old. I had nothing to talk about with him.
“And what’s there? Always a crowd?” I asked for the sake of solidity.
“But why do you keep getting scared?” he laughed again.
“Go to the devil!” I got angry.
“Not a crowd at all. Only acquaintances come, and all our people, rest assured.”
“But what the devil business is it of mine whether they’re all your people or not? Am I one of your people? Why should they go and trust me?”
“I’m bringing you, and that’s enough. They’ve even heard about you. Kraft can also speak for you.”
“Listen, will Vasin be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he is, nudge me as soon as we go in and point to Vasin—as soon as we go in, you hear?”
I had heard a lot about Vasin and had long been interested.
Dergachev lived in a little wing in the courtyard of a wooden house that belonged to a merchant’s widow, but the whole wing was at his disposal. There were three good rooms in all. The four windows all had their blinds lowered. He was a technician and had a job in Petersburg; I had heard in passing that he had been offered a profitable private post in the provinces and that he was about to set off.
As soon as we went into the tiny front hall, we heard voices; there seemed to be a heated argument and someone shouted: “Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat.”1715
I was actually somewhat worried. Of course, I wasn’t used to company, even whatever it might be. In high school I had addressed all my comrades informally, but I was comrades with almost none of them; I had made myself a corner and lived in my corner. But that was not what troubled me. In any case, I had promised myself not to get into any arguments and to say only what was most necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me; above all—don’t argue.
In the room, which was even much too small, there were some seven people, ten including the women. Dergachev was twentyfive years old, and he was married. His wife had a sister and another female relation; they also lived at Dergachev’s. The room was furnished haphazardly, though sufficiently, and was even clean. On the wall hung a lithographic portrait, but a very cheap one, and in the corner an icon without a casing, but with a lighted icon lamp. Dergachev came over to me, shook hands, and invited me to sit down.
“Sit down, they’re all our people here.”
“Be so kind,” a young woman added at once. She was rather pretty, very modestly dressed, and having bowed slightly to me, she at once went out. This was his wife, and it seemed by the look of it that she, too, had been arguing, but had now gone to nurse the baby. The other two ladies remained in the room—one very short, about twenty years old, in a black dress, and also not a bad-looking sort, while the other was about thirty, dry and sharp-eyed. They sat, listened very much, but did not enter into the conversation.
As far as the men were concerned, they were all standing, and the only ones seated, apart from me, were Kraft and Vasin. Efim pointed them out to me at once, because I was now seeing Kraft as well for the first time in my life. I got up from my seat and went over to make their acquaintance. I’ll never forget Kraft’s face: no special beauty, but something as if all too meek and delicate, though personal dignity showed everywhere. Twenty-six years old, rather lean, of above-average height, blond, his face grave but soft; overall there was something gentle in him. And yet, if you had asked me, I would never have traded my maybe even very banal face for his face, which I found so attractive. There was something in his face that I wouldn’t want to have in mine, something all too calm in a moral sense, something like a sort of secret, unconscious pride. However, I was probably unable to judge so literally then; it seems to me now that I judged that way then, that is, after the event.
“I’m very glad you’ve come,” said Kraft. “I have a letter that concerns you. We’ll sit here a while and then go to my place.”
Dergachev was of medium height, broad-shouldered,
very dark-haired, with a big beard; in his glance once could see quickwittedness and restraint in everything, a certain constant wariness; though he was mainly silent, he was obviously in control of the conversation. Vasin’s physiognomy did not impress me very much, though I had heard he was extremely intelligent: blond, with big light gray eyes, a very open face, but at the same time there was something as if excessively hard in it: one sensed little sociability, but his gaze was decidedly intelligent, more intelligent than Dergachev’s, more profound—the most intelligent in the room; however, maybe I’m exaggerating it all now. Of the rest, I recall only two faces among all those young men: one tall, swarthy man with black side-whiskers, who talked a lot, about twenty-seven years old, a teacher or something of that sort, and also a young fellow of my age, in a long Russian vest—with a wrinkle in his face, taciturn, a listener. He turned out later to be of peasant stock.
“No, that’s not the way to put it,” began the teacher with black side-whiskers, who was the most excited of them all, obviously taking up the previous argument again. “I’m not saying anything about mathematical proofs, but this idea, which I’m ready to believe even without mathematical proofs . . .”
“Wait, Tikhomirov,” Dergachev interrupted loudly, “the latest arrivals don’t understand. This, you see,” he suddenly turned to me alone (and, I confess, if his intention was to examine me as a newcomer or make me speak, the method was very clever on his part; I immediately sensed it and prepared myself ), “this, you see, is Mr. Kraft, whose character and solid convictions are quite well-known to us all. Starting from a rather ordinary fact, he has arrived at a rather extraordinary conclusion, which has surprised everybody. He has deduced that the Russian people are a second-rate people . . .”
“Third-rate,” someone cried.
“. . . second-rate, whose fate is to serve merely as material for a more noble race, and not to have its own independent role in the destinies of mankind. In view of this possibly correct deduction of his, Mr. Kraft has come to the conclusion that any further activity of any Russian man should be paralyzed by this idea, so to speak, that everyone should drop their hands and . . .”
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