The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky

by Dostoevsky, Fyodor

  I almost broke into tears, though I knew very well at that moment that the whole thing was from Silvio and from Lermontov’s Masquerade. And all of a sudden I felt terribly ashamed, so ashamed that I stopped the sledge, got out of it, and stood in the snow in the middle of the road. The driver sighed and looked at me in astonishment.

  “What am I to do? I can’t go there, for the whole thing is absurd. But I couldn’t leave things like that, either, because if I did, it would—Good Lord, how could I possibly leave it like that? And after such insults, too! No!” I cried, rushing back to the sledge. “It’s ordained! It’s fate! Drive on! Drive on, there!”

  And in my impatience I hit the driver in the back with my fist.

  “What’s the matter with you? What are you hitting me for?” the poor man shouted, but he whipped up the horse so that it began kicking.

  The wet snow was falling in large flakes. I unbuttoned my overcoat—I didn’t mind the snow. I forgot everything, for I had finally made up my mind to slap Zverkov in the face, and I couldn’t help feeling with horror that now it was going to happen for certain and that nothing in the world could stop it. Solitary street-lamps flickered gloomily in the snowy haze like torches at a funeral. The snow was drifting under my overcoat, under my coat, and under my collar where it melted. I did not button myself up: all was lost, anyway!

  At last we arrived. I jumped out and, hardly knowing what I was doing, rushed up the steps and began banging at the door with my fists and feet. My legs, especially at the knees, felt terribly weak. The door was opened more quickly than I expected, as though they knew about my arrival. (Simonov, as a matter of fact, had warned them that someone else might arrive, and in this place it was necessary to give notice beforehand and, generally, to take precautions. It was one of those “fashion shops” which were long ago closed by the police. In the daytime it really was a shop, but at night those who had an introduction could go there to be entertained.) I walked rapidly through the dark shop into the familiar large room where there was only one candle burning and stopped dead, looking utterly bewildered: there was no one there.

  “But where are they?” I asked someone.

  But, of course, they had already gone their separate ways.

  Before me was standing a person who looked at me with a stupid smirk on her face. It was the proprietress herself who knew me slightly. A moment later a door opened and another person came in.

  I walked up and down the room without paying any attention to them and, I believe, I was talking to myself. It was as though I had been saved from death, and I felt it joyfully with every fibre of my being. For I should most certainly have slapped his face—oh, most certainly! But they were not there and everything—everything had vanished, everything had changed! I looked round. I was still unable to think clearly. I looked up mechanically at the girl who had just entered: I caught sight of a fresh, young, somewhat pale face, with straight dark eyebrows, and with a serious, as it were, surprised look in her eyes. I liked that at once. I should have hated her if she had been smiling. I began looking at her more intently and with a certain effort: I could not collect my thoughts even yet. There was something kind and good-humoured about her face, but also something strangely serious. I was sure that was to her disadvantage here, and that not one of those fools had noticed her. However, you could hardly have called her a beauty, although she was tall, strong, and well-built. She was dressed very simply. Something vile came over me: I went straight up to her.

  I caught sight of myself accidentally in a mirror. My flustered face looked utterly revolting to me: pale, evil, mean, with dishevelled hair. “It’s all right, I’m glad of it,” I thought. “I’m glad that I’ll seem repulsive to her. I like that.…”

  VI

  Somewhere behind the partition, as though under some great pressure, as though someone were strangling it, the clock began wheezing. After the unnaturally protracted wheezing there came a thinnish, disagreeable, and, somehow, unexpectedly rapid chime, as though it had suddenly taken a leap forward. It struck two. I woke up, though I hadn’t been really asleep and had only lain in a state of semiconsciousness.

  The small, narrow, low-ceilinged room, filled with a huge wardrobe and cluttered up with cardboard boxes, clothes, and all sorts of rags, was almost completely dark. The guttered end of a candle which was burning on the table at the other end of the room was on the point of going out, and only from time to time did it flicker faintly. In a few moments the room would be plunged in darkness.

  It did not take me long to recover: everything came back to me in a flash, without the slightest effort, as though it had only been waiting for an opportunity to pounce upon me again. And even while I was fast asleep there always remained some sort of a point in my memory which I never forgot and round which my drowsy dreams revolved wearily. But the strange thing was that everything that had happened to me during the previous day seemed to me now, on awaking, to have occurred a long, long time ago, as though I had long ago shaken it all off.

  My head was heavy. Something seemed to be hovering over me, provoking me, exciting and worrying me. Resentment and black despair were again surging up in me and seeking an outlet. Suddenly, close beside me, I saw two wide-open eyes observing me intently and curiously. The look in those eyes was coldly indifferent and sullen, as though it were utterly detached, and it made me feel terribly depressed.

  A peevish thought stirred in my mind and seemed to pass all over my body like some vile sensation, resembling the sensation you experience when you enter a damp and stale cellar. It seemed somehow unnatural that those two eyes should have been scrutinising me only now. I remembered, too, that for two whole hours I had never said a word to this creature, and had not even thought it necessary to do so; that, too, for some reason appealed to me. Now, however, I suddenly saw clearly how absurd and hideous like a spider was the idea of vice which, without love, grossly and shamelessly begins where true love finds its consummation. We went on looking at each other like that for a long time, but she did not drop her eyes before mine, nor did she change her expression, so that in the end it made me for some reason feel creepy.

  “What’s your name?” I asked abruptly, to put an end to this unbearable situation.

  “Lisa,” she replied, almost in a whisper, but somehow without attempting to be agreeable, and turned her eyes away.

  I said nothing for the next few moments.

  “The weather was beastly yesterday—snow—horrible!” I said, almost as though I were speaking to myself, putting my arm disconsolately under my head and staring at the ceiling.

  She made no answer. The whole thing was hideous.

  “Were you born here?” I asked after a minute’s silence, almost angry with her, and turning my head slightly towards her.

  “No.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Riga,” she replied reluctantly.

  “German?”

  “No, I’m a Russian.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Where?”

  “In this house.”

  “A fortnight.”

  She spoke more and more abruptly. The candle went out. I could no longer make out her face.

  “Have you any parents?”

  “No—yes—I have.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They are there—in Riga.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Oh—”

  “Oh? How do you mean? Who are they? What are they?”

  “Tradespeople.”

  “Did you live with them all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Why did you leave them?”

  “Oh—”

  This “oh” meant leave me alone, I’m fed up. We were silent.

  Goodness only knows why I did not go away. I felt more and more cheerless and disconsolate myself. The events of the previous day passed disjointedly through my mind,
as though of themselves and without any effort on my part. I suddenly remembered something I had seen in the street that morning, when, worried and apprehensive, I was hurrying to the office.

  “I saw them carrying out a coffin yesterday and they nearly dropped it,” I suddenly said aloud, without wishing to start a conversation and almost, as it were, by accident.

  “A coffin?”

  “Yes, in the Hay Market. They were carrying it out of a cellar.”

  “A cellar?”

  “Well, not exactly a cellar. A basement—you know—down there, below—from a disorderly house. There was such filth everywhere—litter, bits of shell—an evil smell—oh, it was horrible.”

  Silence.

  “It was a rotten day for a funeral,” I began again, simply because I did not want to be silent.

  “Why rotten?”

  “Snow—slush—” I yawned.

  “What difference does it make?” she said suddenly after a moment’s silence.

  “No, it was horrible—(I yawned again)—I expect the grave-diggers must have been swearing at getting wet by the snow. And there must have been water in the grave.”

  “Why should there be water in the grave?” she asked with a strange sort of curiosity, but speaking even more abruptly and harshly than before.

  Something inside me suddenly began egging me on to carry on with the conversation.

  “Of course there’s water there. About a foot of water at the bottom. You can’t dig a dry grave in Volkovo cemetery.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “How do you mean? The whole place is a swamp. Marshy ground everywhere. Saw it for myself—many a time.”

  (I had never seen it, nor have I ever been in Volkovo cemetery. All I knew about it was from what I had heard people say.)

  “Don’t you mind it at all—dying, I mean?”

  “But why should I die?” she replied, as though defending herself.

  “You will die one day, you know, and I expect you’ll die the same way as that girl whose coffin I saw yesterday morning. She too was a—a girl like you. Died of consumption.”

  “The slut would have died in the hospital too,” she said.

  (“She knows all about it,” I thought to myself, “and she said ‘slut’ and not girl.”)

  “She owed money to the woman who employed her,” I replied, feeling more and more excited by the discussion. “She worked for her to the very end, though she was in a consumption. The cabmen were talking about it with some soldiers in the street, and they told them that. They were laughing. Promised to have a few drinks to her memory at the pub.”

  (Much of that was pure invention on my part.)

  Silence. Profound silence. She did not even stir.

  “You don’t suppose it’s better to die in a hospital, do you?” she asked, adding a little later, irritably, “What difference does it make? And why on earth should I die?”

  “If not now, then later—”

  “Later? Oh, well—”

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself! Now you’re young, good-looking, fresh, and that’s why they put such a high value on you. But after a year of this sort of life you’ll be different. You’ll lose your looks.”

  “After one year?”

  “Well, after one year your price will have dropped, anyway,” I went on maliciously. “You’ll find yourself in some lower establishment then. In another house. In another year—in a third house, lower and lower. And in about seven years you’ll get to the cellar in the Hay Market. That wouldn’t be so terrible, but, you see, the trouble is that you may fall ill—a weakness in the chest—or catch a cold, or something. In this sort of life it’s not so easy to shake off an illness. Once you fall ill you’ll find it jolly difficult to get well again. And so you will die.”

  “All right, so I’ll die,” she replied, very spitefully, and made a quick movement.

  “But aren’t you sorry?”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “For your life.”

  Silence.

  “You’ve been engaged to be married, haven’t you?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to cross-examine you. What the hell do I care? Why are you so angry? I expect you must have all sorts of trouble. It’s not my business, of course. But I can’t help feeling sorry. That’s all.”

  “Sorry for whom?”

  “Sorry for you.”

  “Not worth it,” she whispered in a hardly audible voice and stirred again.

  That incensed me. Good Lord, I had been so gentle with her, and she.…

  “Well, what do you think about it? You think you’re on the right path, do you?”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with you—you don’t think. Come, get back your senses while there’s still time. You’re still young, you’re good-looking, you might fall in love, be married, be happy—”

  “Not all married women are happy, are they?” she snapped out, in her former harsh, quick, and abrupt manner.

  “Why, no. Not all, of course. But it’s much better than here, anyway. A hundred times better. For if you love, you can live even without happiness. Life is sweet even in sorrow. It’s good to be alive, however hard life is. But what have you got here? Nothing but foulness. Phew!”

  I turned away in disgust. I was no longer reasoning coldly. I was myself beginning to react emotionally to my words and getting worked up. I was already longing to expound my own favourite little notions which I had nursed so lovingly in my funk-hole. Suddenly something flared up in me, a sort of aim had appeared.

  “Don’t pay any attention to me,” I said. “I mean, that I am here. I’m not an example for you. I’m probably much worse than you. Anyway, I was drunk when I came here,” I hastened, however, to justify myself. “Besides, a man is no example for a woman. It’s different. Though I may be defiling and degrading myself, I’m not anyone’s slave: now I’m here, but I shall be gone soon and you won’t see me again. I can shake it all off and be a different man. But you—why, you’re a slave from the very start. Yes, a slave! You give away everything. All your freedom. And even if one day you should want to break your chains, you won’t be able to: you’ll only get yourself more and more entangled in them. That’s the kind of damnable chain it is! I know it. And I’m not mentioning anything else, for I don’t suppose you’ll understand it. Tell me one thing, though. Do you owe money to the woman who employs you? You do, don’t you? Ah, there you are!” I added, though she did not reply, but merely listened in silence, with all her being. “So that’s your chain. You’ll never be able to pay off your debt. They’ll see to that. Why, it’s the same as selling your soul to the devil! And, besides, perhaps for all you know I’m every bit as wretched as you are and wallow in filth on purpose—because I, too, am sick at heart. People take to drink because they are unhappy, don’t they? Well, I, too, am here because I am unhappy. Now, tell me what is there so good about all this? Here you and I were making love to one another—a few hours ago—and we never said a word to each other all the time, and it was only afterwards that you began staring at me like a wild thing. And I at you. Is that how people love one another? Is that how one human being should make love to another? It’s disgusting that’s what it is!”

  “Yes!” she agreed with me, sharply and promptly.

  The promptness with which she had uttered that “yes” even surprised me. So the same thought must have occurred to her too when she was looking so intently at me. So she, too, was capable of the same thoughts. “Damn it, this is interesting—this means that we are akin to one another,” I thought, almost rubbing my hands with glee. And how indeed should I not be able to cope with a young creature like that?

  What appealed to me most was the sporting side of it.

  She turned her head closer to me—so it seemed to me in the dark—propping herself up on her arm. Perhaps she was examining me. I was so sorry I could not see her
eyes. I heard her deep breathing.

  “Why did you come here?” I began, already with a certain note of authority in my voice.

  “Oh—”

  “But it’s nice to be living in your father’s house, isn’t it? Warm, free—your own home.”

  “But what if it’s much worse than it is here?”

  “I must find the right tone,” the thought flashed through my mind. “I shan’t get far by being sentimental with her, I’m afraid.”

  However, it was only a momentary thought. She most certainly did interest me. Besides, I was feeling rather exhausted and irritable, and guile accommodates itself so easily to true feeling.

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” I hastened to reply. “Everything’s possible. You see, I’m sure someone must have wronged you and it’s their fault rather than yours. Mind, I don’t know anything of your story, but it’s quite clear to me that a girl like you wouldn’t have come here of her own inclination, would she?”

  “What kind of girl am I?” she murmured in a hardly audible whisper, but I heard it.

  Damn it all, I was flattering her! That was horrible. But perhaps it was not. Perhaps it was all right.… She was silent.

  “Look here, Lisa, I’ll tell you about myself. If I had had a home when I was a child, I should not be what I am now. I often think of it. For however bad life in a family can be, your father and your mother are not your enemies, are they? They are not strangers, are they? Though perhaps only once a year, they will still show their love for you. And however bad it may be, you know you are at home. But I grew up without a home. That’s why I suppose I am what I am—a man without feeling.…”