The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Oh, I won’t oppose the sacred rights of matrimony, take her, take her! And you know,” he shouted after me, “though it’s not possible for a decent man to fight a duel with you, still, out of respect for your lady, I’m at your service… If you’ll risk it, that is…”

  “Do you hear!” I stopped her on the threshold for a moment.

  After that not a word all the way home. I led her by the hand, and she didn’t resist. On the contrary, she was terribly struck, but only till home. Having come home, she sat down on a chair and fixed her eyes on me. She was extremely pale; though mockery formed on her lips at once, her look was solemnly and severely challenging, and it seemed she was seriously convinced in the first moments that I was going to kill her with the revolver. But I silently took the revolver out of my pocket and put it on the table. She looked at me and at the revolver. (Note this: the revolver was familiar to her. I had had it and kept it loaded ever since I opened the pawnshop. On opening the pawnshop, I had decided not to keep any huge dogs, or a muscular lackey, as Moser, for instance, does. My clients are let in by the cook. But it’s impossible for someone occupied with this trade to go without self-protection, just in case, and so I kept a loaded revolver. In the first days after she entered my house, she got very interested in this revolver, asked questions, and I even explained the mechanism and system to her, and besides that, persuaded her once to shoot at a target. Note all that.) Paying no attention to her frightened look, I lay down half undressed on the bed. I was completely worn out; it was already nearly eleven o’clock. She went on sitting in the same place, without stirring, for about an hour longer, then put out the candle and lay down, also dressed, by the wall, on the sofa. The first time she didn’t lie down with me—note that as well…

  VI

  A TERRIBLE MEMORY

  Now, this terrible memory …

  I woke up in the morning, between seven and eight, I think, and it was already almost completely light in the room. I woke up all at once with full consciousness and suddenly opened my eyes. She was standing by the table holding the revolver in her hand. She didn’t see that I was awake and watching. And suddenly I see her start moving toward me with the revolver in her hand. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to be fast asleep.

  She came to the bed and stood over me. I heard everything; and though a dead silence fell, I heard that silence. Here a convulsive movement occurred—and suddenly, irresistibly, against my will, I opened my eyes. She was looking at me, right into my eyes, and the revolver was already at my temple. Our eyes met. But we looked at each other for no more than a moment. I forcibly closed my eyes again, and at the same moment decided with all my strength of soul that I would not stir or open my eyes again, no matter what lay ahead of me.

  In fact, it does happen that a deeply sleeping man suddenly opens his eyes, even raises his head for a second and looks around the room, and then, after a moment, unconsciously lays his head back on the pillow and falls asleep, remembering nothing.

  When I, having met her gaze and felt the revolver at my temple, suddenly closed my eyes again and did not stir, like a man fast asleep—she decidedly could have supposed that I was in fact sleeping and had seen nothing, the more so as it was quite incredible for someone, after seeing what I had seen, to close his eyes again at such a moment.

  Yes, incredible. But even so she might have guessed the truth—it was this that suddenly flashed through my mind, still in that same moment. Oh, what a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings swept through my mind in less than a moment, and long live the electricity of human thought! In that case (so I felt), if she had guessed the truth and knew I was not asleep, then I had already crushed her by my readiness to accept death, and her hand might now falter. The former resolution might be dashed against the new extraordinary impression. They say that people standing on a high place are as if drawn down of themselves into the abyss. I think many suicides and murders have been committed only because the revolver has already been taken in hand. Here, too, is an abyss; here, too, is a forty-five-degree slope, down which you cannot help sliding, and something invincibly challenges you to pull the trigger. But the awareness that I had seen everything, knew everything, and was silently awaiting death from her—might keep her from the slope.

  The silence continued, and suddenly at my temple, through my hair, I felt the cold touch of steel. You may ask: did I have any firm hope of salvation? I’ll answer you as before God: I had no hope, except perhaps for one chance in a hundred. Why, then, did I accept death? But I will ask: what did I need life for after that revolver, raised against me by the being I adored? Besides, I knew with all the strength of my being that at that very moment a fight was going on between us, a terrible life-and-death combat, the combat of that same coward of yesterday, driven out by his comrades for cowardice. I knew it, and she knew it, if only she had guessed the truth that I was not asleep.

  Maybe this isn’t so, maybe I didn’t think that then, but it had to be so even without thinking, because all I did afterward, in every hour of my life, was think of it.

  But again you will ask a question: why did I not save her from evildoing? Oh, I asked myself this question a thousand times afterward—every time that, with a chill in my spine, I recalled that second. But my soul was in dark despair then: I was perishing, I was perishing myself, could I have saved anyone else? And how do you know whether I wanted to save anyone then? Who knows what I might have felt then?

  My consciousness, however, was seething; seconds passed, there was dead silence; she was still standing over me—and suddenly I shivered with hope! I quickly opened my eyes. She was no longer in the room. I got up: I was victorious—and she was forever defeated!

  I came out to have tea. The samovar was always served in the front room, and she always poured tea. I sat down at the table silently and accepted the glass of tea from her. After about five minutes I glanced at her. She was terribly pale, still paler than yesterday, and was looking at me. And suddenly—and suddenly, seeing that I was looking at her, she smiled palely with her pale lips, a timid question in her eyes. “That means she’s still in doubt and is asking herself: does he know or doesn’t he, did he see or didn’t he?” I looked away indifferently. After tea I locked the shop, went to the market, and bought an iron bed and a screen. Coming home, I ordered the bed put in the big room and partitioned off with the screen. It was a bed for her, but I didn’t say a word to her. Even without words she understood from this bed that I “had seen and knew everything” and that there was no longer any doubt. I left the revolver on the table for the night, as usual. At night she silently lay down on this new bed: the marriage was dissolved, she was “defeated, but not forgiven.” During the night she became delirious, and by morning was in a fever. She lay ill for six weeks.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  THE DREAM OF PRIDE

  LUKERYA HAS just announced that she’s not going to live with me, and once the lady is buried, she’s quitting. I prayed on my knees for five minutes, and wanted to pray for an hour, but I kept thinking, thinking, and my thoughts are all sick, and my head is sick—what’s the point of praying—nothing but sin! It’s also strange that I don’t want to sleep: in great, in all too great grief, after the first very strong outbursts, one always wants to sleep. They say those condemned to death sleep extremely soundly on their last night. That’s how it should be, it’s according to nature, otherwise one’s strength would fail… I lay down on the sofa, but didn’t fall asleep …

  … For the six weeks of her illness then, we looked after her day and night—I, Lukerya, and a trained nurse from the hospital, whom I had hired. I didn’t spare the money, and I even wanted to spend on her. I invited Dr. Schroeder and paid him ten roubles per visit. When she regained consciousness, I tried to keep out of her sight. But, anyhow, what am I describing. When she was on her feet completely, she quietly and silently sat in my room at a special table, which I also bought for her at that time… Yes, it’s true, we were per
fectly silent; that is, we started talking later, but—all ordinary things. I, of course, purposely did not become expansive, but I noticed very well that she, too, was as if glad not to say an extra word. I thought this perfectly natural on her part: “She’s too shaken and defeated,” I thought, “and, of course, she must be allowed to forget and get used to it.” In this fashion we kept silent, but every minute I was preparing myself for the future. I thought she was doing the same, and it was terribly entertaining for me to keep guessing: precisely what is she thinking about now?

  I’ll say more: oh, of course, no one knows how much I endured, lamenting over her during her illness. But I lamented to myself, and suppressed the groans in my breast even from Lukerya. I couldn’t imagine, couldn’t even suppose, that she might die without having learned everything. But when she was out of danger and her health began to return—this I remember—I quickly and very much calmed down. What’s more, I decided to postpone our future for as long as possible, and meanwhile leave everything in its present way. Yes, something strange and particular—I don’t know what else to call it—happened to me then: I was triumphant and the consciousness of it in itself proved perfectly sufficient for me. So the whole winter passed. Oh, I was pleased as I had never been before, and that for the whole winter.

  You see: in my life there was one terrible external circumstance, which until then, that is, until that very catastrophe with my wife, had weighed on me every day and every hour—namely, the loss of my reputation and this retirement from the regiment. In two words: there had been a tyrannical injustice against me. True, my comrades disliked me for my difficult character—my ridiculous character, perhaps—though it often happens that what is most sublime for you, what is cherished and revered by you, at the same time for some reason makes the crowd of your comrades laugh. Oh, I was never liked, even at school. Never and nowhere was I liked. Lukerya is also unable to like me. The incident with the regiment, though a consequence of the dislike for me, was undoubtedly of an accidental character. I say that because there is nothing more offensive and insufferable than to perish from an accident that might or might not have happened, from an unfortunate conglomeration of circumstances that might have passed over like a cloud. For an intellectual being it is humiliating. The accident was as follows.

  During intermission at the theater, I stepped out to the buffet. The hussar A———v, suddenly coming in, began loudly telling two fellow hussars, in the presence of other officers and the public, that Captain Bezumtsev of our regiment had just caused a scandal in the corridor, “and appears to be drunk.” The conversation did not catch on, and the whole thing was a mistake, because Captain Bezumtsev was not drunk, and the scandal was in fact no scandal. The hussars started talking about other things, and that was the end of it, but next day the story penetrated our regiment, and right away they started talking about me being the only one from our regiment who was in the buffet, and when the hussar A———v made an impudent reference to Captain Bezumtsev, I did not go up to A———v and stop him with a rebuke. But why on earth should I? If he had a bone to pick with Bezumtsev, that was their personal affair, and why should I get involved in it? Meanwhile the officers began to say that the affair was not personal, but also concerned the regiment, and since of the officers of our regiment I was the only one there, I had thus proved to all the other officers and the public in the buffet that there could be officers of our regiment who were not so ticklish about honor—their own or that of their regiment. I could not agree with such a finding. I was given to know that I could still mend everything, if even now, late though it was, I should wish to have a formal talk with A———v. I did not wish to do that and, being annoyed, proudly refused. Right after that I handed in my resignation—that’s the whole story. I came out proud, but crushed in spirit. My will and reason collapsed. Just then it also happened that my sister’s husband in Moscow squandered our small fortune, including my share of it—a tiny share, but I was left penniless in the street. I could have taken a private position, but I didn’t: after a splendid uniform, I couldn’t work somewhere in railways. And so—if it’s shame, let it be shame, if it’s disgrace, let it be disgrace, if it’s degradation, let it be degradation, and the worse the better—that’s what I chose. Here follow three years of dark memories and even Vyazemsky’s house. A year and a half ago a rich old woman, my godmother, died in Moscow, unexpectedly leaving me, among others, three thousand in her will. I thought a little and thereupon decided my fate. I decided on a pawnshop, without begging people’s pardon: money, then a corner, and—a new life far away from old memories—that was the plan. Nevertheless the dark past and the forever ruined reputation of my honor oppressed me every hour, every minute. But here I got married. Accidentally or not—I don’t know. But in bringing her into my house, I thought I was bringing a friend, and I needed a friend so very much. But I saw clearly that the friend had to be prepared, completed, and even won over. And how could I explain anything just like that to a sixteen-year-old and prejudiced girl? For instance, how could I, without the accidental help of this terrible catastrophe with the revolver, convince her that I was not a coward, and that I had been unjustly accused of cowardice in the regiment? But the catastrophe came just pat. Having withstood the revolver, I had revenged myself on my whole gloomy past. And though no one knew of it, she did, and that was everything for me, because she herself was everything for me, all my hope for the future in my dreams! She was the only person I was preparing for myself, and there was no need for any other—and now she knew everything; at least she knew that she had hastened unjustly to join my enemies. This thought delighted me. I could no longer be a scoundrel in her eyes, perhaps only an odd person, but after what had happened, I did not dislike this thought all that much: oddity is no vice, on the contrary, it sometimes attracts the feminine character. In short, I deliberately put off the denouement: what had happened was, for the moment, quite sufficient for my peace and contained quite enough pictures and material for my dreams. The nasty part of it is that I’m a dreamer: the material was enough for me, and as for her, I thought she could wait.

  So the whole winter went by in some expectation of something. I liked to steal a look at her when she was sitting, as usual, at her table. She was busy with handwork, with linens, and in the evening she sometimes read books that she took from my bookcase. The selection of books in it also should have testified in my favor. She hardly ever went anywhere. Toward evening, after dinner, I took her for a walk each day, and we got our exercise; but not in perfect silence as before. I precisely tried to pretend that we were not being silent and talked agreeably, but, as I’ve already said, we both did it in such a way as not to be too expansive. I did it on purpose, and she, I thought, had to be “given time.” Of course, it’s strange that it never once occurred to me, almost till the end of winter, that while I liked looking at her in secret, I never once caught her glancing at me that whole winter! I thought it was her timidity. Besides, she had a look of such timid meekness, such strengthlessness after her illness. No, better to wait it out and—“and she herself will suddenly come to you…”

  This thought delighted me irresistibly. I will add only that at times I excited myself as if on purpose and actually brought my mind and spirit to a point where I felt offended by her. And so it continued for some time. Yet my hatred could never ripen and settle in my soul. And I felt myself that it was as if only a game. And even when I dissolved the marriage and brought the bed and screen, I still could never, never see her as a criminal. And not because I took a light-minded view of her crime, but because I had had the intention of forgiving her completely from the very first day, even before I bought the bed. In short, it was an oddity on my part, for I am morally strict. On the contrary, in my eyes she was so defeated, so humiliated, so crushed, that I sometimes pitied her painfully, though for all that I sometimes decidedly liked the idea of her humiliation. It was the idea of our inequality that I liked …

  That winter I happened
deliberately to do several good deeds. I forgave two debts, I gave one poor woman money without any pledge. And I did not tell my wife about it, and I did it not at all so that my wife would find out; but the woman herself came to thank me, all but on her knees. So it became known; it seemed to me that she was actually pleased to learn about the woman.

  But spring was coming, it was already the middle of April, the storm windows had been taken down, and bright sheaves of sunlight began to light up our silent rooms. Yet a veil hung before me and blinded my reason. A fatal, terrible veil! How did it happen that it all suddenly fell from my eyes, and I suddenly recovered my sight and understood everything! Was it an accident, or had the appointed day come, or did a ray of sun light up the thought and the answer in my stupefied mind? No, there was no thought or answer here, but here suddenly some nerve began to play, some nerve, grown numb, began to tremble and came alive and lit up my whole stupefied soul and my demonic pride. Just as if I’d suddenly jumped up from my seat then. And it did happen suddenly and unexpectedly. It happened toward evening, at five o’clock after dinner.

  II

  THE VEIL SUDDENLY FELL

  A couple of words first. Already a month ago I noticed a strange pensiveness in her, not silence now, but real pensiveness. This, too, I noticed suddenly. She was sitting over her work then, her head bent to her sewing, and didn’t see that I was looking at her. And right then it suddenly struck me that she had become so thin, so slender, her little face pale, her lips white—all that, as a whole, together with the pensiveness, struck me extremely and all at once. Even before then I had heard a dry little cough, especially at night. I got up at once and went to invite Schroeder to come, telling her nothing.