Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  To withhold his wages, for example, for as little as two or three days, was impossible. He'd make such a to-do that I wouldn't even know where to hide. But in those days I was so embittered against everyone that I resolved, who knows why or what for, to punish Apollon and not give him his wages for another two weeks. I had long been intending to do this, for two years or so - solely to prove to him that he dared not get so puffed up over me, and that if I wished I could always not give him his wages. I decided not to tell him about it and even to maintain a deliberate silence, in order to vanquish his pride and make him be the first to speak of his wages. Then I would take all seven roubles from the drawer, to show him that I had them and had deliberately set them aside, but that I "did not, did not, simply did not want to give him his wages, did not want to because that's how I wanted it, because such was 'my will as the master,' because he was irreverent, because he was a boor; but that if he asked reverently, perhaps I would relent and pay him; otherwise he'd have to wait another two weeks, wait three weeks, wait a whole month…"

  But, angry though I was, the victory still went to him. I didn't even hold out for four days. He began with what he always began with on such occasions - for there had already been such occasions, or attempts (and, I will note, I knew it all beforehand, I knew his mean tactics by heart) - that is, he usually began by fixing me with an extremely stern look, not taking it off me for several minutes at a time, following me with his eyes especially when I came in or was leaving the house. If, for example, I held out and pretended not to notice these looks, he would proceed, silently as ever, to further tortures. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he would come softly and smoothly into my room while I was pacing about or reading, stop by the door, put one arm behind his back, thrust out one hip, and fix me with his eyes, no longer so much stern as altogether contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make no reply, and go on staring at me point-blank for several seconds more; then, pressing his lips together in some special way, with a significant air, he would turn slowly on his heel and suddenly go to his room. About two hours later he would suddenly emerge again, and again appear before me in the same way. Sometimes, in my fury, I would no longer ask what he wanted, but simply raise my head abruptly and imperiously, and also begin staring point-blank at him. And so we'd stare at each other like that for about two minutes; finally, he would turn, slowly and pompously, and go away for another two hours.

  If I refused to be brought to reason by all this and continued my rebellion, he would suddenly begin to sigh as he looked at me, sigh long and deeply, as if measuring with each sigh the full depth of my moral fall, and, of course, it would end at last with him overcoming me completely: I'd get furious, I'd shout, but with that which had been the whole point I'd be forced to comply.

  This time, however, as soon as the usual "stern look" maneuvers began, I immediately lost my temper and fell on him in a fury. I was all too irritated to begin with.

  "Stop!" I yelled in a frenzy, as he was turning, slowly and silently, one arm behind his back, to go to his room. "Stop! Come back! Come back, I tell you!" And I must have bellowed so unnaturally that he turned and began to study me even with a certain surprise. However, he still did not say a word, and it was this that infuriated me.

  "How dare you come in here without permission and stare at me like that! Answer!"

  But he, having looked at me calmly for about half a minute, again began to turn around.

  "Stop!" I roared, running up to him, "don't move! So. Now answer: what did you come in here and stare for?"

  "If there's something you want done direckly, it's my duty to see to it," he replied, again after some silence, lisping softly and measuredly, raising his eyebrows, and calmly shifting his head from one side to the other - and all that with horrifying composure.

  "That's not it, that's not what I'm asking you, hangman!" I shouted, shaking with anger. "I'll tell you myself, hangman, why you keep coming here: you see I'm not giving you your wages, in your pride you don't want to bow and beg, and for that you come with your stupid staring to punish me, to torture me, and you don't even r-r-realize, hangman, how stupid it is, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!"

  He again began to turn silently, but I grabbed him.

  "Listen," I was shouting at him. "Here's the money, see, here it is!" (I took it out of the drawer.) "All seven roubles, but you won't get it, you will not get it, until such time as you come respectfully, with a guilty head, to ask my forgiveness. Do you hear!"

  "That can never be!" he replied, with a sort of unnatural self-assurance.

  "It will be!" I was shouting. "I give you my word of honor, it will be!"

  "And there's nothing for me to ask your forgiveness about," he went on, as if not noticing my shouts at all, "seeing as you yourself have abused me with 'hangman,' on which offense I can always apply against you at the precinct."

  "Go! Apply!" I roared. "Go now, this minute, this second! And you're still a hangman! hangman! hangman!" But he just looked at me, then turned and, no longer listening to my appeals, went smoothly to his place without a backward glance.

  "There wouldn't be any of this if it weren't for Liza!" I decided to myself. Then, after a moment's pause, pompously and solemnly, but slowly and with a pounding heart, I myself proceeded behind his screen.

  "Apollon!" I said softly and measuredly, though I was suffocating, "go for the police chief at once, without the slightest delay!"

  He had managed meanwhile to sit down at his table, put on his spectacles, and begin some sewing. But hearing my order, he suddenly snorted with laughter.

  "Go now, this minute! Go, or you can't even imagine what will happen!"

  "Truly, you're not in your right senses," he observed, without even raising his head, with the same slow lisp, and continuing to thread his needle. "Who's ever seen a man go to the authorities against himself? And as to scaring me - you're exerting yourself in vain, because - nothing will happen."

  "Go!" I shrieked, grabbing him by the shoulder. I felt I was about to strike him.

  And I did not even hear how the outer door opened at that moment, softly and slowly, and some figure entered, stopped, and began gazing at us in perplexity. I looked, died of shame, and rushed to my room. There, clutching my hair with both hands, I leaned my head against the wall and stood frozen in that position.

  About two minutes later I heard the slow steps of Apollon.

  " Some… one is asking for you out there," he said, looking at me with particular sternness, then stepped aside and let in - Liza. He did not want to leave, and stared at us mockingly.

  "Get out! Get out!" I ordered repeatedly, quite lost. At that moment my clock strained, hissed, and struck seven.

  IX

  And now, full mistress of the place, Come bold and free into my house.

  From the same poetry

  I stood before her, destroyed, branded, disgustingly embarrassed, and, I think, smiling, trying as hard as I could to wrap myself in my ragged old quilted dressing gown - well, exactly as I had pictured to myself recently in fallen spirits. Apollon hovered around us for about two minutes and then left, but that made it no easier for me. Worst of all was that she, too, suddenly became embarrassed, much more so than I would even have expected. From looking at me, of course.

  "Sit down," I said mechanically, and moved a chair out for her at the table, while I myself sat on the sofa. She sat down at once and obediently, staring at me all eyes, apparently expecting something from me right then. The naivety of this expectation infuriated me, but I restrained myself.

  The thing to do here would have been to try not to notice anything, as if it were all quite ordinary, but she… And I sensed vaguely that she was going to pay dearly for it all…

  "You find me in an odd situation, Liza," I began, stammering, and knowing that this was precisely not how I should have begun.

  "No, no, don't think anything of the sort!" I cried, seeing her suddenly blush. "I'm not ashamed of my poverty
… On the contrary, I look upon my poverty with pride. I'm poor, but noble… One can be poor and noble," I went on mumbling. "However… would you like some tea?"

  "No…" she tried to begin.

  "Wait!"

  I jumped up and ran to Apollon. I really had to vanish somewhere.

  "Apollon," I whispered in a feverish patter, flinging down before him the seven roubles, which had remained in my fist all the while, "here's your wages; see, I'm giving it to you; but for that you must save me: go at once and bring some tea and ten rusks from the tavern. If you refuse to go, you'll ruin a man's happiness. You don't know what this woman is… This is -everything. You're perhaps having certain thoughts… But you don't know what this woman is!…"

  Apollon, who had already sat down to work, and had already put his spectacles back on, at first, without abandoning his needle, silently cast a sidelong glance at the money; then, paying no attention to me and not answering me at all, he went on fussing with his thread, which he was still trying to put through the needle. I waited for about three minutes, standing before him, my arms folded a la Napoleon. My temples were damp with sweat; I was pale, I could sense it. But, thank God, he must have felt sorry looking at me. Having finished with his needle, he slowly rose from his seat, slowly moved the chair aside, slowly took off his spectacles, slowly counted the money, and at last, having asked me over his shoulder: should he get a full portion? - slowly walked out of the room. As I was returning to Liza, it occurred to me on the way: why don't I flee, just as I am, in my wretched old dressing gown, wherever my feet take me, and come what may?

  I sat down again. She looked at me anxiously. For several minutes we said nothing.

  "I'll kill him!" I suddenly cried, banging my fist so hard on the table that the ink splashed out of the inkstand.

  "Ah! What is it!" she cried with a start.

  "I'll kill him, I'll kill him!" I was shrieking, pounding on the table, in a perfect frenzy, and at the same time with a perfect understanding of how stupid it was to be in such a frenzy.

  "You don't know, Liza, what this hangman is for me. He's my hangman… He's just gone to get some rusks; he…"

  And I suddenly broke down in tears. It was a fit. Oh, how ashamed I was between sobs; but I could no longer hold them back.

  She was frightened. "What is it! What's the matter!" she kept crying out, bustling around me.

  "Water, give me water, over there!" I murmured in a weak voice, conscious, however, within myself, that I was quite well able to do without water and not to murmur in a weak voice. But I was putting on a show, as they say, to preserve decency, though the fit was a real one.

  She gave me water, looking at me as if lost. At that moment Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this ordinary and prosaic tea was terribly indecent and measly after all that had happened, and I blushed. Liza looked at Apollon even fearfully. He went out without glancing at us.

  "Liza, do you despise me?" I said, looking at her point-blank, trembling with impatience to find out what she thought.

  She became embarrassed, and was unable to reply.

  "Drink your tea!" I said spitefully. I was angry with myself, but, naturally, she was going to bear the brunt of it. A terrible spite against her suddenly boiled up in my heart; I think I could simply have killed her. To be revenged on her, I swore mentally not to speak even one word to her from then on. "It's she who caused it all," I thought.

  Our silence had already lasted some five minutes. The tea sat on the table; we didn't touch it: it went so far that I purposely refused to begin drinking, so as to make it still harder for her; and it would have been awkward for her to begin. Several times she glanced at me in sad perplexity. I was stubbornly silent. The chief martyr, of course, was myself, because I was fully conscious of all the loathsome baseness of my spiteful stupidity, and at the same time I simply could not restrain myself.

  "I want… to get out of there… for good," she tried to begin, in order to break the silence somehow, but, poor thing! she precisely ought not to have started with that at such a moment, stupid as it was to begin with, or to such a man, stupid as I was to begin with. Even my heart ached from pity for her ineptness and unnecessary candor. But something ugly immediately suppressed all pity in me; it even egged me on still more: perish the whole world! Another five minutes passed.

  "Perhaps I've disturbed you?" she began timidly, in a barely audible voice, and started to get up.

  But as soon as I saw this first flash of injured dignity I simply trembled with anger and at once burst out.

  "What did you come to me for, do tell me, please?" I began, suffocating, and not even considering the logical order of my words. I wanted to speak everything out at once, in one shot; I didn't even care where I began.

  "Why did you come? Answer! Answer!" I kept exclaiming, all but beside myself. "I'll tell you why you came, my dear. You came because of the pathetic words I used with you then. So you went all soft, and you wanted more 'pathetic words.' Know, then, know that I was laughing at you that time. And I'm laughing now. Why do you tremble? Yes, laughing! I'd been insulted earlier, at dinner, by the ones who came there ahead of me. I came there to give a thrashing to one of them, the officer; but I didn't succeed, he wasn't there; I needed to unload my offense on someone, to get my own back, and you turned up, so I poured out my spite and laughed at you. I'd been humiliated, so I, too, wanted to humiliate; they'd ground me down like a rag, so I, too, wanted to show my power… That's what it was, and you thought I came then on purpose to save you, right? That's what you thought? That's what you thought?"

  I knew she might perhaps get confused and not understand the details; but I also knew she'd understand the essence perfectly well. And so it happened. She turned white as a sheet, tried to utter something, her mouth twisted painfully; but, as if cut down with an axe, she sank onto the chair. And all the rest of the time she listened to me with open mouth, with wide open eyes, and trembling in terrible fear. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words crushed her…

  "To save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running back and forth in front of her, "to save you from what! But maybe I'm worse than you are. Why didn't you fling it in my mug when I started reading you my oration: And you, what did you come here for? To teach us morals, or what?' Power, power, that's what I wanted then, the game was what I wanted, I wanted to achieve your tears, your humiliation, your hysterics - that's what I wanted then! But I couldn't stand it myself, because I'm trash, I got all scared and, like a fool, gave you my address, devil knows why. And afterwards, even before I got home, I was already cursing you up and down for that address. I already hated you, because I'd lied to you then. Because I only talk a good game, I only dream in my head, but do you know what I want in reality? That you all go to hell, that's what! I want peace. I'd sell the whole world for a kopeck this minute, just not to be bothered. Shall the world go to hell, or shall I not have my tea? I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. Did you know that or not? Well, and I do know that I'm a blackguard, a scoundrel, a self-lover, a lazybones. I spent these past three days trembling for fear you might come. And do you know what particularly bothered me all these three days? That I had presented myself to you as such a hero then, and now you'd suddenly see me in this torn old dressing gown, abject, vile. I just told you I was not ashamed of my poverty, know, then, that I am ashamed, I'm ashamed of it most of all, afraid of it more than anything, more than of being a thief, because I'm so vain it's as if I'd been flayed and the very air hurts me. But can you possibly not have realized even now that I will never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing gown, as I was hurling myself like a vicious little cur at Apollon? The resurrector, the former hero, flinging himself like a mangy, shaggy mutt at his lackey, who just laughs at him! And those tears a moment ago, which, like an ashamed woman, I couldn't hold back before you, I will never forgive you! And what I'm confessing to you now, I will also never forgive you! Yes - yo
u, you alone must answer for all this, because you turned up here, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the most vile, the most ridiculous, the most petty, the most stupid, the most envious of all worms on earth, who are in no way better than I, but who, devil knows why, are never embarrassed; while I will just go on being flicked all my life by every nit - that's my trait! Besides, what do I care if you won't understand a word of it! And what, tell me, what, what do I care about you and whether you're perishing there or not? Do you understand, now that I've spoken it all out to you, how I'm going to hate you for being here and listening? Because a man speaks out like this only once in his life, and then only in hysterics!… What more do you want? Why, after all this, do you still stick there in front of me, tormenting me, refusing to leave?"

  But here a strange circumstance suddenly occurred.

  I was so used to thinking and imagining everything from books, and to picturing everything in the world to myself as I had devised it beforehand in my dreams, that at first I didn't even understand this strange circumstance. What occurred was this: Liza, whom I had insulted and crushed, understood far more than I imagined. She understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else - namely, that I myself was unhappy.

  The frightened and insulted feeling in her face first gave way to rueful amazement. And when I began calling myself a scoundrel and a blackguard, and my tears poured down (I had spoken the entire tirade in tears), her whole face twisted in a sort of convulsion. She wanted to get up, to stop me; and when I came to the end, she paid no attention to my cries: "Why are you here, why don't you leave!" but only to how very hard it must have been for me to speak it all out. Besides, she was so downtrodden, poor thing; she considered herself infinitely beneath me; how could she be angry or offended? She suddenly jumped from her chair on some irrepressible impulse, and, all yearning towards me, but still timidly, not daring to move from the spot, stretched out her arms to me… Here my heart, too, turned over in me. Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms about my neck, and burst into tears. I, too, could not help myself and broke into such sobbing as had never happened to me before…