Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  IX

  "Into my house come bold and free, Its rightful mistress there to be."

  I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and Ibelieve I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of myragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had imagined the scene notlong before in a fit of depression. After standing over us for acouple of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more atease. What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed withconfusion, more so, in fact, than I should have expected. At the sightof me, of course.

  "Sit down," I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and Isat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at meopen-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naiveteof expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.

  She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been asusual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I shouldmake her pay dearly for ALL THIS.

  "You have found me in a strange position, Liza," I began, stammeringand knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. "No, no, don'timagine anything," I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. "Iam not ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary, I look with prideon my poverty. I am poor but honourable.... One can be poor andhonourable," I muttered. "However ... would you like tea?...."

  "No," she was beginning.

  "Wait a minute."

  I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.

  "Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him theseven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,"here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you mustcome to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.If you won't go, you'll make me a miserable man! You don't know whatthis woman is.... This is--everything! You may be imaginingsomething.... But you don't know what that woman is! ..."

  Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectaclesagain, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking orputting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attentionto me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,which he had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minuteswith my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON. My temples were moist with sweat.I was pale, I felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved topity, looking at me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got upfrom his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took offhis spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking meover his shoulder: "Shall I get a whole portion?" deliberately walkedout of the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred tome on the way: shouldn't I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown,no matter where, and then let happen what would?

  I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we weresilent.

  "I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fistso that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

  "What are you saying!" she cried, starting.

  "I will kill him! kill him!" I shrieked, suddenly striking the tablein absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupidit was to be in such a frenzy. "You don't know, Liza, what thattorturer is to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetchsome rusks; he ..."

  And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. Howashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrainthem.

  She was frightened.

  "What is the matter? What is wrong?" she cried, fussing about me.

  "Water, give me water, over there!" I muttered in a faint voice, thoughI was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well withoutwater and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what iscalled, PUTTING IT ON, to save appearances, though the attack was agenuine one.

  She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that momentApollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that thiscommonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after allthat had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon withpositive alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.

  "Liza, do you despise me?" I asked, looking at her fixedly, tremblingwith impatience to know what she was thinking.

  She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

  "Drink your tea," I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself, but,of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spiteagainst her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could havekilled her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say aword to her all the time. "She is the cause of it all," I thought.

  Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; wedid not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining frombeginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her tobegin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity.I was obstinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spitefulstupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

  "I want to... get away ... from there altogether," she began, to breakthe silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she oughtnot to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid asI was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless andunnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifledall compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did notcare what happened. Another five minutes passed.

  "Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly, hardly audibly, and wasgetting up.

  But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positivelytrembled with spite, and at once burst out.

  "Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?" I began, gasping forbreath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed tohave it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how tobegin. "Why have you come? Answer, answer," I cried, hardly knowingwhat I was doing. "I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.You've come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now youare soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you mayas well know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at younow. Why are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had beeninsulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that eveningbefore me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult onsomeone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen onyou and laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted tohumiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power....That's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purposeto save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?"

  I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all inexactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, verywell indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as ahandkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. Andall the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and hereyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, thecynicism of my words overwhelmed her....

  "Save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and downthe room before her. "Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse thanyou myself. Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving youthat sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for? was it to readus a sermon?' Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what Iwanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, yourhysteria--that was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn't keep itup then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, thedevil knows why, gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before Igot home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, Ihated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I onlylike playing with words, only dre
aming, but, do you know, what I reallywant is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I wantpeace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, solong as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to gowithout my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as Ialways get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I knowthat I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here Ihave been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of yourcoming. And do you know what has worried me particularly for thesethree days? That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would seeme in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told youjust now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well knowthat I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, moreafraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because I am asvain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you forhaving found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying atApollon like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flyinglike a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey wasjeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears I couldnot help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put toshame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never forgiveyou either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you turned up likethis, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest,absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bitbetter than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! Andwhat is it to me that you don't understand a word of this! And what doI care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there ornot? Do you understand? How I shall hate you now after saying this,for having been here and listening. Why, it's not once in a lifetime aman speaks out like this, and then it is in hysterics! ... What moredo you want? Why do you still stand confronting me, after all this?Why are you worrying me? Why don't you go?"

  But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed tothink and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything inthe world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance. Whathappened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a greatdeal more than I imagined. She understood from all this what a womanunderstands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that Iwas myself unhappy.

  The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first bya look of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling myself ascoundrel and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade wasaccompanied throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively.She was on the point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished shetook no notice of my shouting: "Why are you here, why don't you goaway?" but realised only that it must have been very bitter to me tosay all this. Besides, she was so crushed, poor girl; she consideredherself infinitely beneath me; how could she feel anger or resentment?She suddenly leapt up from her chair with an irresistible impulse andheld out her hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and notdaring to stir.... At this point there was a revulsion in my hearttoo. Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burstinto tears. I, too, could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I neverhad before.

  "They won't let me ... I can't be good!" I managed to articulate; thenI went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for aquarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put herarms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the troublewas that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing theloathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrustinto my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of afar-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkwardnow for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Whywas I ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too,came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completelychanged, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed andhumiliated creature as she had been before me that night--four daysbefore.... And all this came into my mind during the minutes I waslying on my face on the sofa.

  My God! surely I was not envious of her then.

  I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,I was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. Icannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless toreason.

  I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooneror later ... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because Iwas ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindledand flamed up in my heart ... a feeling of mastery and possession. Myeyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How Ihated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feelingintensified the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. Atfirst there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, butonly for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.

  X

  A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room infrenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen andpeeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground withher head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But shedid not go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood itall. I had insulted her finally, but ... there's no need to describeit. She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge,a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatredwas added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy.... Though I do notmaintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but shecertainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and whatwas worse, incapable of loving her.

  I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible tobe as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strangeI should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is itstrange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for Irepeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moralsuperiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any othersort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinkingthat love really consists in the right--freely given by the belovedobject--to tyrannise over her.

  Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as astruggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moralsubjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugatedobject. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeededin so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life,"as to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her toshame for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not evenguess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,because to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort ofruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only showitself in that form.

  I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the roomand peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferablyoppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted"peace," to be left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressedme with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

  But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, asthough she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly atthe screen as though to remind her.... She started, sprang up, andflew to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making herescape from me.... Two minutes later she came from behind the screenand looked with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which wasforced, however, to KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned away from hereyes.

  "Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.

  I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it andclosed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed aw
ay in haste to theother corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....

  I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did thisaccidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, throughlosing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straightout that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite. Itcame into my head to do this while I was running up and down the roomand she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain:though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from theheart, but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, sopurposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, thatI could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoidseeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I openedthe door in the passage and began listening.

  "Liza! Liza!" I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down onthe stairs.

  "Liza!" I cried, more loudly.

  No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door openheavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.

  She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horriblyoppressed.

  I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat andlooked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;straight before me on the table I saw.... In short, I saw a crumpledblue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minutebefore. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no otherin the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the tableat the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.

  Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I haveexpected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect formy fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. Icould not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. Shecould not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into thestreet.

  It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and fallingalmost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street asthough with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was tobe heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. Iran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.

  Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?

  Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet,to entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast wasbeing rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute withindifference. But--what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hateher, perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognised that day, for thehundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?

  I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and ponderedthis.

  "And will it not be better?" I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. "Will itnot be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult forever? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging andpainful consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul andhave exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will neverdie in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--thefeeling of insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h'm!... perhaps, too, by forgiveness.... Will all that make things easierfor her though? ..."

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: whichis better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which isbetter?

  So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the painin my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet couldthere have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging thatI should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heardnothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long timeafterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentmentand hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.

  * * * * *

  Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes"here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway Ihave felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it'shardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to telllong stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morallyrotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, throughdivorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world,would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all thetraits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and whatmatters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are alldivorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing forreal life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have comealmost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, andwe are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do wefuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for somethingelse? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us ifour petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, forinstance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen thespheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I knowthat you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will beginshouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for yourmiseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all ofus--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all ofus." As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my lifecarried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, andwhat's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and havefound comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all,there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully!Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what itis called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and inconfusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to clingto, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body andblood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contriveto be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, andfor generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, andthat suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it.Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; Idon't want to write more from "Underground."

  [The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could notrefrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stophere.]