The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “However, essentially she’s in her rights,” thought Ivan Ilyich, “and besides, they don’t know propriety.”

  “Hm… you mustn’t stand on ceremony, brother Porfiry,” he turned to Pseldonymov. “Perhaps you have something there… to tend to… or whatever… please, don’t be embarrassed.—Is he keeping watch on me, or what?” he added to himself.

  He was beginning to find Pseldonymov unbearable, with his long neck and eyes fixed intently on him. In short, all this was not it, not it at all, but Ivan Ilyich was still far from wanting to admit it.

  The quadrille began.

  “Shall I, Your Excellency?” Akim Petrovich asked, deferentially holding the bottle in his hands and preparing to fill His Excellency’s glass.

  “I… I don’t really know if…”

  But Akim Petrovich, with a reverently beaming face, was already pouring the champagne. Having filled his glass, he also, as if on the sly, as if thievishly, shrinking and cringing, filled his own, with the difference that he filled it one whole finger less, which was somehow more deferential. He was like a woman in childbirth sitting next to his immediate superior. What indeed was he to talk about? Yet he had to entertain His Excellency even out of duty, since he had the honor of keeping him company. The champagne served as a way out, and it was even pleasing to His Excellency to have his glass filled—not for the sake of the champagne, which was warm and the most natural swill, but just so, morally pleasing.

  “The old boy wants a drink himself,” thought Ivan Ilyich, “and he doesn’t dare without me. I mustn’t hinder… And it’s ridiculous if the bottle just stands between us.”

  He took a sip, which in any case seemed better than just sitting there.

  “I’m here,” he began, with pauses and emphases, “I’m here, so to speak, by chance, and, of course, it may be that the others find… that it’s… so to speak, in-ap-propriate for me to be at such a… gathering.”

  Akim Petrovich was silent and listened with timid curiosity.

  “But I hope you understand why I’m here… It’s not really that I came to drink wine. Heh, heh!”

  Akim Petrovich was about to chuckle along with His Excellency, but somehow stopped short and again did not respond with anything reassuring.

  “I’m here… in order, so to speak, to encourage… to show, so to speak, a moral, so to speak, goal,” Ivan Ilyich went on, vexed at Akim Petrovich’s obtuseness, but suddenly fell silent himself. He saw that poor Akim Petrovich had even lowered his eyes, as if he were guilty of something. The general, in some perplexity, hastened to take another sip from his glass, while Akim Petrovich, as if his whole salvation lay in it, seized the bottle and poured more.

  “It’s not that you have so many resources,” thought Ivan Ilyich, looking sternly at poor Akim Petrovich. The latter, sensing this stern general’s glance on him, resolved now to be definitively silent and not raise his eyes. So they sat facing each other for two minutes or so, a painful two minutes for Akim Petrovich.

  A couple of words about this Akim Petrovich. He was a placid man, like a hen, of the oldest cast, nurtured on obsequiousness, and yet a kind man and even a noble one. He came from Petersburg Russians—that is, both his father and his father’s father were born, grew up, and served in Petersburg and never once left Petersburg. These are a totally special type of Russian people. They have scarcely the faintest notion of Russia, and that does not trouble them at all. Their whole interest is confined to Petersburg and, above all, to the place where they serve. All their cares are concentrated around penny preference, grocery shop, and monthly salary. They do not know even a single Russian custom, nor a single Russian song, except “Luchinushka,”24 and that only because barrel organs play it. However, there are two essential and unshakable tokens by which you may instantly distinguish a true Russian from a Petersburg Russian. The first is that all Petersburg Russians, all, without exception, always say Academic Bulletin and never Petersburg Bulletin.25 The second, equally essential token is that a Petersburg Russian never uses the word “breakfast,” but always says “Frühstück,”26 putting special emphasis on the Früh. By these basic and distinctive tokens you can always distinguish them: in short, this is a humble type and was formed definitively over the last thirty-five years. However, Akim Petrovich was by no means a fool. Had the general asked him something appropriate for him, he would have replied and kept up the conversation, whereas it was quite unfitting for a subordinate to answer such questions, though Akim Petrovich was dying of curiosity to learn something more specific about His Excellency’s real intentions …

  And meanwhile Ivan Ilyich was falling more and more into reverie and into a certain round of ideas; distracted, he imperceptibly but ceaselessly sipped from his glass. Akim Petrovich at once and most diligently poured more. Both were silent. Ivan Ilyich was beginning to watch the dancing, and soon it attracted his attention somewhat. Suddenly one circumstance even surprised him…

  The dancing was indeed merry. Here people danced precisely in simplicity of heart, to make merry and even get wild. Among the dancers very few were adroit; but the non-adroit stomped so hard that they might have been taken for adroit. The officer distinguished himself above all: he especially liked the figures where he remained alone, as in a solo. Then he would bend himself amazingly—namely, standing straight as a milepost, he would suddenly lean to one side so that you would think he was about to fall over, but at the next step he would suddenly lean to the opposite side, at the same sharp angle to the floor. He maintained a most serious expression and danced with the full conviction that everyone was amazed at him. Another gentleman, after getting potted beforehand, prior to the quadrille, fell asleep beside his partner at the second figure, so that his lady had to dance alone. A young registrar, who was dancing away with the lady in the blue scarf, in all the figures and all five quadrilles that had been danced that evening, kept pulling one and the same stunt—namely, he would lag behind his partner a little, pick up the end of her scarf, and, in air, at the changing of partners, would manage to plant about twenty kisses on it. The lady would go sailing on ahead of him as if she noticed nothing. The medical student indeed performed a solo upside down and provoked furious rapture, stomping, and squeals of pleasure. In short, there was unconstraint in the extreme. Ivan Ilyich, in whom the wine was also having its effect, was beginning to smile, but gradually some bitter doubt began to creep into his soul: of course, he very much liked casualness and unconstraint; he had desired, his soul had even called for this casualness, as they were all backing away, but now this casualness was beginning to go beyond limits. One lady, for instance, wearing a shabby blue velvet dress, bought at fourth hand, pinned her skirt up for the sixth figure in such a way that it was as if she were wearing trousers. This was that same Kleopatra Semyonovna with whom one could risk anything, as her partner, the medical student, had put it. Of the medical student there was nothing else to say: simply Fokine.27 How could it be? First they backed away, and then suddenly they got so quickly emancipated! It seemed like nothing, yet this transition was somehow strange: it foreboded something. As if they had totally forgotten there was any Ivan Ilyich in the world. Naturally, he was the first to laugh and he even risked applauding. Akim Petrovich deferentially chuckled in unison with him, though, by the way, with obvious pleasure and not suspecting that His Excellency was already beginning to nurse a new worm in his heart.

  “You dance nicely, young man,” Ivan Ilyich felt forced to say to the student as he was passing by: the quadrille had just ended.

  The student turned sharply to him, pulled some sort of grimace, and, bringing his face indecently close to His Excellency’s, gave a loud cock-crow. This was too much. Ivan Ilyich got up from the table. In spite of that, there followed a burst of irrepressible laughter, because the cock-crow was astonishingly natural, and the whole grimace was completely unexpected. Ivan Ilyich was still standing in perplexity when Pseldonymov himself suddenly came and, bowing, began inviting him to supper. After hi
m came his mother.

  “Your Excellency,” she said, bowing, “do us the honor, dearie, don’t scorn our poverty…”

  “I… I really don’t know…” Ivan Ilyich began, “it was not for this that I… I… was just about to leave…”

  He was indeed holding his hat in his hand. Not only that: just then, at that very instant, he had given himself his word of honor that he would leave without fail, at once, whatever the cost, and not stay for anything, and… and he stayed. A minute later he was leading the procession to the table. Pseldonymov and his mother went ahead, clearing the way for him. He was seated in the place of honor, and again a full bottle of champagne appeared before him. There were appetizers: herring and vodka. He reached out, poured himself a huge glass of vodka, and drank it. He had never drunk vodka before. He felt as if he were tumbling down a mountain, falling, falling, falling, that he must hold on, get a grip on something, but there was no opportunity for that.

  His position was indeed becoming more and more peculiar. Not only that: it was some sort of mockery of fate. God knows what had happened to him in one little hour. When he came in, he was, so to speak, opening his embrace to all mankind and all his subordinates; and here, before one little hour had passed, he felt and knew with all his aching heart that he hated Pseldonymov, cursed him, and his wife, and his wedding. Not only that: from his face, from his eyes alone, he could see that Pseldonymov also hated him, that his eyes were all but saying: “Go to blazes, curse you! Fastened yourself on my neck!…” All this he had long since read in his look.

  Of course, even now, as he was sitting down at the table, Ivan Ilyich would sooner have let his hand be cut off than admit sincerely, not only aloud, but even to himself, that all this was indeed exactly so. The moment had not yet fully come, and for now there was still a certain moral balance. But his heart, his heart… it was sick! it begged for freedom, air, rest. Ivan Ilyich was all too kindly a man.

  He knew, he knew very well, that he should have left long ago, and not only so as to leave, but so as to save himself. That all this had suddenly become something else—well, had turned out totally unlike his dream on the planks that evening.

  “Why did I come? Did I really come to eat and drink here?” he asked himself, munching on pickled herring. He even got into negation. There were moments when irony at his great deed stirred in his soul. He was even beginning not to understand himself why, in fact, he had come.

  But how could he leave? To leave like that, without going through with it, was impossible. “What will people say? They’ll say I go dragging myself around to indecent places. In fact, it will even come out that way if I don’t go through with it. What, for instance, will be said tomorrow (because it will spread everywhere), by Stepan Nikiforovich, by Semyon Ivanych, in the offices, at the Shembels’, at the Shubins’? No, I must leave in such a way that they all understand why I came, I must reveal the moral purpose…” And meanwhile this touching moment refused to be caught. “They don’t even respect me,” he went on. “What are they laughing at? They’re so casual, as if unfeeling… Yes, I’ve long suspected the whole younger generation of being unfeeling! I must stay, whatever the cost!… They’ve just been dancing, but once they’ve gathered around the table… I’ll start talking about problems, about reforms, about Russia’s greatness… I’ll still get them carried away! Yes! Maybe absolutely nothing is lost yet… Maybe this is how it always is in reality. Only how shall I begin with them so as to attract them? What sort of method must I come up with? I’m at a loss, simply at a loss… And what do they want, what do they demand?… I see they’re laughing at something over there… Can it be at me, oh, Lord God! But what is it that I want… why am I here, why don’t I leave, what am I after?…” He thought this, and some sort of shame, some deep, unbearable shame wrung his heart more and more.

  But it all went on that way, one thing after another.

  Exactly two minutes after he sat down at the table, a dreadful thought took possession of his whole being. He suddenly felt that he was terribly drunk, that is, not as before, but definitively drunk. The cause of it was the glass of vodka, which, drunk on top of the champagne, produced an immediate effect. He felt, he sensed with his whole being, that he was definitively weakening. Of course, this greatly increased his bravado, yet consciousness did not abandon him, but cried out: “Not nice, not nice at all, and even quite indecent!” Of course, his unsteady, drunken thoughts could not settle on any one point: suddenly, even tangibly for himself, something like two sides appeared in him. On one was bravado, a yearning for victory, the overthrowing of obstacles, and a desperate conviction that he would still reach his goal. The other side made itself known to him by a tormenting ache in his soul and some gnawing at his heart. “What will people say? where will it end? what will tomorrow bring, tomorrow, tomorrow!…”

  Earlier he had somehow vaguely sensed that he already had enemies among the guests. “That’s because I was drunk then, too,” he thought with tormenting doubt. What was his horror now, when he indeed became convinced, by indubitable signs, that he indeed had enemies at the table, and it was no longer possible to doubt it.

  “And for what? for what?” he thought.

  At this table all thirty guests were placed, some of whom were definitively done in. The others behaved with a certain nonchalant, malignant independence; they all shouted, talked loudly, offered premature toasts, fired bread balls with the ladies. One, a sort of uncomely person in a greasy frock coat, fell off his chair as soon as he sat at the table, and remained that way until the end of the supper. Another absolutely insisted on climbing onto the table and delivering a toast, and only the officer, who grabbed him by the coattails, restrained his premature enthusiasm. The supper was a perfect omniumgatherum, though a cook had been hired to prepare it, some general’s serf: there was a galantine, there was tongue with potatoes, there were meat cakes with green peas, there was, finally, a goose, and, to crown it all, blancmange. For drinks there were beer, vodka, and sherry. A bottle of champagne stood in front of the general alone, which forced him to pour for Akim Petrovich as well, since the man no longer dared use his own initiative at supper. For toasts the rest of the guests were meant to drink Georgian wine or whatever there happened to be. The table itself consisted of many tables put together, among them even a card table. It was covered with many tablecloths, including a colored Yaroslavl one. Gentlemen and ladies were seated alternately. Pseldonymov’s maternal parent did not want to sit at the table; she bustled about and gave orders. Instead there appeared a malignant female figure who had not made an appearance earlier, in a sort of reddish silk dress, with a bound cheek, and in the tallest of bonnets. As it turned out, this was the bride’s mother, who had finally agreed to come from the back room for supper. She had not come out till then on account of her implacable enmity for Pseldonymov’s mother; but of that we shall speak later. This lady looked spitefully, even mockingly, at the general, and apparently did not wish to be introduced to him. To Ivan Ilyich this figure seemed highly suspect. But, besides her, certain other persons were also suspect and inspired an involuntary apprehension and alarm. It even seemed that they were in some conspiracy among themselves, and precisely against Ivan Ilyich. At least it seemed so to him, and in the course of the supper he became more and more convinced of it. Namely: there was malignancy in one gentleman with a little beard, a free artist of some sort; he even glanced several times at Ivan Ilyich and then, turning to his neighbor, whispered something in his ear. Another, a student, was in truth already thoroughly drunk, but all the same was suspect by certain tokens. The medical student also boded ill. Even the officer himself was not altogether trustworthy. But an especial and obvious hatred shone from the collaborator on The Firebrand: he sprawled so in his chair, had such a proud and presumptuous air, snorted so independently! And though the rest of the guests did not pay any special attention to the collaborator, who had written only four little ditties for The Firebrand, thus becoming a liberal, and eviden
tly even disliked him, still, when a bread ball suddenly fell next to Ivan Ilyich, obviously sent in his direction, he was ready to stake his head that the perpetrator of this bread ball was none other than the collaborator on The Firebrand.

  All this, of course, affected him in a lamentable fashion.

  Particularly disagreeable was yet another observation: Ivan Ilyich was fully convinced that he was beginning to articulate words somehow unclearly and with difficulty, that he wanted to say a great deal, but his tongue would not move. Then, that he had suddenly begun as if to forget himself and, above all, out of the blue, would suddenly snort and laugh when there was nothing at all to laugh at. This disposition quickly passed after a glass of champagne, which Ivan Ilyich, though he had poured it for himself, had no wish to drink, but suddenly drank somehow quite accidentally. After this glass, he suddenly almost wanted to weep. He felt he was lapsing into the most peculiar sentimentality; he was beginning to love again, to love everybody, even Pseldonymov, even the collaborator on The Firebrand. He suddenly wanted to embrace them all, to forget everything and make peace. Not only that: to tell them everything frankly, everything, everything, that is, what a kind and nice man he was, with what excellent abilities. How he was going to be useful to the fatherland, how he was able to make the fair sex laugh, and, above all, what a progressist he was, how humanely he was prepared to condescend to everyone, to the most lowly, and, finally, in conclusion, to tell frankly the whole motive that had induced him to come, uninvited, to Pseldonymov’s, drink two bottles of champagne, and overjoy them with his presence.

  “The truth, the sacred truth first of all, and frankness! I’ll get them with frankness. They’ll believe me, I see it clearly; they even look hostile, but when I reveal everything to them, I’ll subject them irresistibly. They’ll fill their glasses and, with a shout, drink my health. The officer, I’m sure of it, will break his glass on his spur. There may even be a shout of ‘hurrah!’ Even if they should decide to toss me hussar fashion, I wouldn’t resist, it would even be rather nice. I’ll kiss the bride on the forehead; she’s a sweetie. Akim Petrovich is also a very good man. Pseldonymov, of course, will improve in time. He lacks, so to speak, this worldly polish… And though, of course, this whole new generation lacks this delicacy of heart, but… but I’ll tell them about the modern destiny of Russia among the other European powers. I’ll mention the peasant question, too, yes, and… and they’ll all love me, and I’ll come out with glory!…”