I told her everything about myself and about her. And about Lukerya. I told her that I had wept … Oh, I’d change the subject, you see, I was also trying not to remind her of certain things at all. And, you see, she even livened up once or twice, you see, I remember, I remember! Why do you say that I looked and saw nothing? And if only this had not happened, everything would have been resurrected. You see, it was she who told me the day before yesterday, when the conversation turned to reading and what she had read that winter – you see, it was she who told me and laughed, when she recalled that scene between Gil Blas and the Archbishop of Granada.20 And what a childish laugh, sweet, just like when she was still my fiancée (an instant! an instant!); I was so happy! I was terribly struck, however, by the archbishop: you see, that meant she had found enough peace of mind and happiness to laugh at that masterpiece while she sat there that winter. That means that she had already begun to find herself wholly at peace, that she had already begun to be wholly persuaded that I would leave her like that. ‘I thought that you were going to leave me like that’ – that’s what she had said then on Tuesday! Oh, the thought of a ten-year-old girl! And you see, she believed, believed that everything would in fact remain like that: she at her table, I at mine, and that’s how it would be for both of us until we were sixty. And suddenly – here I come forward, her husband, and her husband needs love! Oh, the incomprehensibility, oh, my blindness!
It was also a mistake to look at her with rapture; I should have exercised restraint, because the rapture frightened her. But you see, I did exercise restraint, I didn’t kiss her feet anymore. Not once did I make a show of the fact … well, that I was her husband – oh, and it didn’t even cross my mind, I only worshipped her! But you see, I couldn’t be completely silent, I couldn’t say nothing at all, you see! I suddenly told her that I enjoyed her conversation and that I considered her incomparably, incomparably more educated and developed than I. Embarrassed, she blushed bright red and said that I was exaggerating. At this point, unable to contain myself, I foolishly told her what rapture I’d felt when I stood behind the door and listened to her duel, a duel of innocence with that beast, and how I had taken pleasure in her intelligence, her sparkling wit, combined with such childlike simple-heartedness. She seemed to shudder all over, murmured again that I was exaggerating, but suddenly her whole face darkened, she covered it with her hands and burst into sobs … Here I was unable to hold myself back: I again fell down before her, I again started to kiss her feet and again it ended in a fit, just as it had on Tuesday. That was yesterday evening, but the next morning …
Next morning?! Madman, but that morning was today, just now, only just now!
Listen and consider carefully: you see, when we met just now (this was after yesterday’s attack), she even struck me with her calmness, that’s how it was! While all night long I had been trembling with fear over what had happened yesterday. But suddenly she comes up to me, stands before me and with her arms folded (just now, just now!), began by telling me that she’s a criminal, that she knows this, that the crime has tormented her all winter long, and is tormenting her now … that she values my magnanimity all too much … ‘I’ll be your true wife, I’ll respect you …’ Here I jumped up and embraced her like a madman! I kissed her, I kissed her face, her lips, like a husband, for the first time after a long separation. But why did I go out just now, for only two hours … our foreign passports … Oh, God! If only I had returned five minutes earlier, just five minutes! … And now there’s this crowd at our gate, these eyes fixed on me … Oh, Lord!
Lukerya says (oh, I won’t let Lukerya go now for anything, she knows everything, she was here all winter, she’ll tell me everything), she says that after I left the house and only some twenty minutes before my return – she suddenly went into our room to see the mistress to ask her something, I don’t remember what, and she saw that her icon (the same icon of the Mother of God) had been taken down and was on the table before her, and that her mistress seemed to have been praying before it. ‘What’s wrong, mistress?’ ‘Nothing, Lukerya, you may go … Wait, Lukerya,’ she walked up to her and kissed her. ‘Are you happy, mistress?’ I ask. ‘Yes, Lukerya.’ ‘The master should have come to ask your forgiveness long ago … Thank God, you’ve made up.’ ‘All right, Lukerya,’ she says, ‘leave me, Lukerya.’ And she smiled, but so strangely. So strangely that ten minutes later Lukerya suddenly went back to look in on her: ‘She was standing by the wall, right by the window, she had placed her hand on the wall, and laid her head on her hand, she was standing like that and thinking. And she was so lost in thought standing there that she didn’t hear me standing there and watching her from the other room. I saw that she was smiling, as it were, standing, thinking and smiling. I looked at her, turned around ever so quietly and walked out, thinking to myself, only suddenly I hear the window being opened. I at once went to say that “it’s fresh, mistress, you’ll catch cold” – and suddenly I see that she’s climbed up on to the window and is already standing there upright, in the open window, with her back towards me and holding the icon. My heart just sank then and I cried out: “Mistress, mistress!” She heard, made a move as if to turn around towards me, but didn’t, instead she took a step, clutched the icon to her breast – and threw herself out the window!’
I only remember that when I entered the gates she was still warm. The main thing is that they’re all looking at me. At first they were shouting, but then they suddenly fell silent and they all make way for me and … and she’s lying there with the icon. I remember, though darkly, that I walked over in silence and looked for a long time, and they all gathered round and are saying something to me. Lukerya was there, but I didn’t see her. She says that she spoke with me. I remember only that trades-man: he kept shouting at me ‘only a handful of blood came out of her mouth, a handful, a handful!’ and pointing to the blood on a stone. I think I touched the blood with my finger, smeared some on my finger, looked at my finger (I remember that), and he kept saying to me: ‘A handful, a handful!’
‘And what do you mean “a handful”?’ I wailed, they say, with all my might, I raised my arms and threw myself at him …
Oh, it’s absurd, absurd! Incomprehensibility! Improbability! Impossibility!
IV. Only Five Minutes Too Late
But is it really? Is it really probable? Can one really say that it was possible? Why, for what reason did this woman die?
Oh, believe me, I understand; but why she died is still a question. She was frightened of my love, she asked herself seriously whether she should accept it or not, and she couldn’t bear the question and it was better to die. I know, I know, there’s no use in racking my brains over it: she had made too many promises, got frightened that she couldn’t keep them – that’s clear. There are a number of circumstances here that are quite terrible.
Because why did she die? The question persists, all the same. The question hammers, hammers away in my brain. I would even have left her like that if she had wished to be left like that. She didn’t believe it, that’s what! No, no, I’m lying, that’s not it at all. It was simply because with me it had to be honest: to love meant to love completely, and not like she would have loved the merchant. And since she was too chaste, too pure to agree to a love like a merchant needs, she didn’t want to deceive me. She didn’t want to deceive me with half a love or a quarter of a love under the guise of love. She was much too honest, that’s what it is, gentlemen! I wanted to cultivate breadth of heart then, do you remember? A strange thought.
I’m terribly curious: did she respect me? I don’t know. Did she despise me or not? I don’t think she did. It’s terribly strange: why didn’t it occur to me all winter long that she despised me? I was utterly convinced of the contrary right until the moment when she looked at me then with stern surprise. Precisely, stern. It was then that I understood at once that she despised me. I understood irrevocably and forever! Ah, let her, let her despise me, for her whole life even, but let her live, live!
Just now she was still walking, talking. I don’t at all understand how she could throw herself out the window! And how could I have supposed that even five minutes earlier? I summoned Lukerya. I won’t let Lukerya go now for anything, not for anything!
Oh, we could still have come to an understanding. It’s just that we had grown so terribly unused to each other during the winter, but couldn’t we have become accustomed to one another again? Why, why couldn’t we have come together and begun a new life again? I’m magnanimous, and so is she – that’s the point of connection! Just a few words more, two days, no more, and she would have understood everything.
The main thing, it’s a pity that it all comes down to chance – simple, barbaric inertia, chance. That’s the pity of it! All of five minutes, I was only five minutes late! If I had arrived five minutes earlier – the moment would have passed by, like a cloud, and it would never have occurred to her again. And it would have ended by her understanding everything. But now the rooms stand empty again and I’m alone once again. There’s the pendulum ticking, it doesn’t care, it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone. There’s no one – that’s the awful thing!
I pace, I keep pacing. I know, I know, don’t try to put words in my mouth: you think it’s ridiculous that I complain about chance and the five minutes? But it’s obvious, you see. Consider one thing: she didn’t even leave a note saying, ‘Don’t blame anyone for my death’, like everyone does. Could she really not have considered that even Lukerya might get into trouble? They might say, ‘You were alone with her, so you must have pushed her.’ In any event, she would have been dragged away, innocent though she was, if four people in the courtyard hadn’t seen from the windows of the wing and the courtyard how she stood there holding the icon and hurled herself down. But, you see, that’s chance as well that people were standing and saw it. No, this was all a moment, just one inexplicable moment. Suddenness and fantasy! So what if she was praying before the icon? That doesn’t mean that this was before death. The entire moment lasted, perhaps, all of some ten minutes, the entire decision – precisely when she was standing by the wall, with her head resting on her arm, and smiling. The thought flew into her head, her head started spinning and – and she couldn’t withstand it.
It was a clear misunderstanding, say what you will. She could still have lived with me. But what if it was anaemia? Simply on account of anaemia, the exhaustion of vital energy? She had grown tired during the winter, that’s what it was …
I was late!!!
How very thin she is in the coffin, how sharp her little nose has become! Her eyelashes lie like arrows. And she fell, you see – without smashing or breaking anything! Just this one ‘handful of blood’. A dessert spoon, that is. Internal concussion. A strange thought: What if it were possible not to bury her? Because if they take her away, then … Oh, no, it’s almost impossible that she’ll be taken away! Oh, of course, I know that she must be taken away, I’m not a madman and I’m not the least bit delirious; on the contrary, my mind has never been so lucid – but how can it be that again there’ll be no one in the house, again the two rooms, and again I’m alone with the pledges. Delirium, delirium, that’s where the delirium lies! I tormented her – that’s what it was!
What are your laws to me now? What do I need with your customs, your ways, your life, your government, your faith? Let your judges judge me, let them take me to court, to your public court, and I will say that I acknowledge nothing. The judge will shout: ‘Silence, officer!’ And I will cry out to him: ‘What power do you now possess that I should obey you? Why has dark inertia shattered that which was dearest of all? What need have I now of your laws? I part company with you.’ Oh, it’s all the same to me!
Blind, she’s blind! Dead, she doesn’t hear! You don’t know with what paradise I would have surrounded you. The paradise was in my soul; I would have planted it all round you! Well, you wouldn’t have loved me – so be it, what of it? Everything would have been like that, everything would have stayed like that. You would have talked to me only as a friend – and we would have rejoiced and laughed with joy, as we looked into each other’s eyes. That’s how we would have lived. And if you had fallen in love with somebody else – well, so be it, so be it! You would have walked with him and laughed, while I looked on from the other side of the street … Oh, let it be anything, anything, if only she would open her eyes just once! For one moment, just one! If she would look at me as she did just now, when she stood before me and swore to be my faithful wife! Oh, she would have understood it all in one glance!
Inertia!21 Oh, nature! People are alone on this earth – that’s the problem! ‘Is there a man alive on the field?’ the Russian bogatyr22 cries out. And I cry out as well, though I am not a bogatyr, and no one answers. They say that the sun gives life to the universe. The sun will rise and – look at it, isn’t it dead?23 Everything is dead, the dead are everywhere. There are only people, and all around them is silence – that’s the earth. ‘People, love one another’ – who said that?24 Whose commandment is that? The pendulum ticks insensibly, disgustingly. It’s two o’clock in the morning. Her little shoes are by the bed, as if they were waiting for her … No, seriously, when they take her away tomorrow, what will become of me?
1876
THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
A Fantastic Story
I
I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank if I weren’t just as ridiculous to them as I was before. But I’m no longer angry now, they’re all so dear to me now, and even when they laugh at me – even then they’re somehow particularly dear to me. I would laugh with them – not at myself really, but because I love them, if it weren’t so sad for me to look at them. Oh, how hard it is when you’re the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand.
Before it used to make me miserable that I seemed ridiculous. Not seemed, but was. I was always ridiculous, and I have known that, perhaps, since the very day I was born. Perhaps I already knew when I was seven years old that I was ridiculous. Then I went to school, then to university and what do you know – the more I studied, the more I learned that I was ridiculous. So that for me all my university studies in the end existed solely to prove and explain to me, the more deeply I delved, that I was ridiculous. As in my studies, so in my life. With each passing year the same consciousness about my ridiculous appearance in all regards grew and became more firmly established. I was always laughed at by everybody. But not one of them knew or guessed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than everyone else that I was ridiculous, then that man was I, and that what I found all the more annoying was that they didn’t know, but I was to blame for that: I was always so proud that I never wished under any circumstances to admit it to anybody. This pride grew in me as the years passed and if it had happened that I allowed myself to confess to anybody at all that I was ridiculous, I think I would have blown my brains out with a revolver that very evening. Oh, how I suffered in my adolescence that I might break down and suddenly somehow confess it to my schoolmates myself. But since becoming a man, though I learned with each passing year more and more about my terrible nature, for some reason I became somewhat calmer. Precisely for some reason, because to this day I can’t determine why. Perhaps because a terrible anguish was growing in my soul in connection with a certain circumstance that was already infinitely beyond me: namely, the conviction that was gaining ground in me that in the whole wide world nothing made any difference. I’d had an inkling of this a very long time ago, but I became fully convinced somehow suddenly last year. I suddenly felt that it didn’t make any difference to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing anywhere. I began to sense and feel with all my being that there was nothing around me. At first it seemed to me that there had been a great deal before, but then I perceived that there had been nothing before either, but that it had only seemed like that for some reason. Little by little, I was persuaded t
hat there would never be anything in the future either. Then I suddenly stopped getting angry at people and almost stopped noticing them. Indeed, this became apparent in even the smallest trifles: for example, I would happen to be walking down the street and would bump into people. And not because I was lost in thought: what did I have to think about; I had completely stopped thinking then: nothing made any difference to me. And it would have been another matter if I had resolved some problems; oh, but I didn’t resolve a single one, and there were so many of them! But nothing made any difference to me any more and all the questions had faded away.
And then, after all this, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, on the 3rd of November1 to be precise, and from that time I remember every second. It was a gloomy evening, as gloomy as could be. I was returning home some time after ten o’clock and I remember precisely that I thought that there couldn’t possibly be a gloomier time. Even in the physical regard. It had been pouring all day long and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, the rain was even threatening, I remember that, with a palpable hostility towards people, and then suddenly, at eleven o’clock, it stopped and a strange dampness ensued, damper and colder than when it had been raining, and some sort of steam was rising from everything, from every stone on the street and from every lane, if you looked far into its very depths from the street. It suddenly occurred to me that if the gaslights everywhere went out, then it would become more cheerful, that gaslight makes the heart sadder, because it lights everything up. I had eaten almost nothing that day and since early evening I had been visiting a certain engineer, who had two other friends with him. I kept my silence, and I think that they had had enough of me. They were talking about something controversial and suddenly even became excited. But it didn’t really make any difference to them, I saw that, and they had become excited merely because they should. And I suddenly said this to them: ‘Gentlemen,’ I told them, ‘you know that it doesn’t make any difference to you.’ They weren’t offended, but they all laughed at me. That’s because I said it without any reproach, but simply because it didn’t make any difference to me. They saw that it didn’t make any difference to me and were amused by that.
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