The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (Modern Library Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Then why have you written all this?” you ask me.

  “Well, suppose I put you in a dark cellar for forty years without anything to do and then came to see you in your dark cellar after the forty years to find out what had become of you. Can a man be left for forty years with nothing to do?”

  “But aren’t you ashamed? Don’t you feel humiliated?” you will perhaps say, shaking your head contemptuously. “You long for life, yet you try to solve the problems of life by a logical tangle! And how tiresome, how insolent your tricks are, and, at the same time, how awfully frightened you are! You talk a lot of nonsense and you seem to be very pleased with it; you say a lot of impudent things, and you are yourself always afraid and apologising for them. You assure us that you are afraid of nothing, and at the same time you try to earn our good opinion. You assure us that you are gnashing your teeth, but at the same time you crack jokes to make us laugh. You know your jokes are not amusing, but you seem to be highly pleased with their literary merit. You may perhaps have really suffered, but you don’t seem to have the slightest respect for your suffering. There may be some truth in you, but there is no humility. You carry your truth to the market place out of the pettiest vanity to make a public show of it and to discredit it. No doubt you mean to say something, but you conceal your last word out of fear, because you haven’t the courage to say it, but only craven insolence. You boast about your sensibility, but you merely don’t know your own mind. For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility. And how tiresome you are! How you impose yourself on people! The airs you give yourself! Lies, lies, lies!”

  Now, of course, I’ve made up all this speech of yours myself. It, too, comes from the dark cellar. I’ve been listening to your words for forty years through a crack in the ceiling. I have invented them myself. It is the only thing I did invent. No wonder I got it pat and dressed it up in a literary form.

  But are you really so credulous as to imagine that I would print all this, and let you read it into the bargain? And there is another puzzle I’d like to solve: why on earth do I address you as “gentlemen,” as though you really were my readers? Such confessions which I am now about to make are not printed, nor given to other people to read. At least I have not enough pluck for that, nor do I consider it necessary to have it. But, you see, a strange fancy has come into my head and I want to realise it, cost what may. It’s like this:—

  There are certain things in a man’s past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind. I can put it even this way: the more decent a man is, the larger will the number of such things be. At least I have allowed myself only recently to remember some of my early adventures, having till now avoided them rather uneasily. I’m afraid. Now, however, when I have not only remembered them, but have also made up my mind to write them down, I particularly want to put the whole thing to the test to see whether I can be absolutely frank with myself and not be afraid of the whole truth. Let me add, by the way: Heine says that true biographies are almost impossible, and that a man will most certainly tell a lot of lies about himself. In his view, Rousseau told a lot of lies about himself in his Confessions, and told them deliberately, out of vanity. I am sure Heine is right; I can understand perfectly how sometimes one tells all sorts of lies about oneself out of sheer vanity, even going so far as to confess to all sorts of crimes, and I can perfectly understand that sort of vanity. But Heine had in mind a man who made his confessions to the public. I, however, am writing for myself, and I should like to make it clear once and for all that if I address myself in my writings to a reader, I’m doing it simply as a matter of form, because I find it much easier to write like that. It is only a form, an empty show, for I know that I shall never have any readers. I have already intimated as much.…

  I don’t want to be hampered by any considerations in the editing of my Memoirs. I shan’t bother about order or system. I shall put down whatever I remember.

  Now, of course, I might, for instance, be taken at my word and asked if I really do not count on any readers, why do I now put down all sorts of conditions, and on paper, too, such as not to pay any attention to order or system, to write down what I remember, etc., etc. Why all these explanations? Why all these apologies?

  “Ah,” I reply, “now you’re asking!”

  There is, incidentally, a whole psychology in all this. Perhaps it’s simply that I am a coward. Again, perhaps it is simply that I’m imagining an audience on purpose so as to observe the proprieties while I write. There are thousands of reasons, no doubt.

  Then again there is this further puzzle: what do I want to write it down for? What is the object of it all? If I’m not writing for the reading public, why not simply recall these things in my mind without putting them down on paper?

  Well, I suppose I could do that, but it will look more dignified on paper. There is something imposing about that. There will be a greater sense of passing judgment on myself. The whole style, I’m sure, will be better. Moreover, I really may feel easier in my mind if I write it down. I have, for instance, been latterly greatly oppressed by the memory of some incident that happened to me a long time ago. I remembered it very vividly the other day, as a matter of fact, and it has since been haunting me like some annoying tune you can’t get out of your head. And yet I simply must get rid of it. I have hundreds of such memories, but at times one of them stands out from the rest and oppresses me. So why shouldn’t I try?

  And, lastly, I’m awfully bored, and I have nothing to do. Writing down things is, in fact, a sort of work. People say work makes man better and more honest. Well, here’s a chance for me at any rate.

  Snow is falling today, almost wet snow, yellow, dirty. It was snowing yesterday, too, and the other day. I think it is because of the wet snow that I remembered the incident which gives me no rest now. So let it be a story apropos of the wet snow.

  PART II

  APROPOS OF THE WET SNOW

  When with a word of fervent conviction,

  From the lowest dregs of dark affliction,

  A soul from eternal doom I saved;

  And in horror and in torments steeped,

  Wringing your hands, you curses heaped

  Upon the life that once you craved;

  When your unheeding conscience at last

  With your guilty memories flaying,

  The dreadful story of your sin-stained past

  To me you narrated, pardon praying;

  And full of horror, full of shame,

  Quickly in your hands you hid your face,

  Unconscious of the flood of tears that came,

  Shaken and indignant at your own disgrace.… etc., etc.

  From the poetry of N. A. NEKRASSOV.

  I

  I was only twenty-four at the time. My life even then was gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery. I had no friends or acquaintances, avoided talking to people, and buried myself more and more in my hole. When at work in the office I tried not to look at anyone and I knew perfectly well that my colleagues not only regarded me as a queer fellow, but also—I couldn’t help feeling that, too—looked upon me with a sort of loathing. I wondered why no one except me had ever had this feeling that people looked upon him with loathing. One of the clerks at the office had a repulsive, pock-marked face, the face, I should say, of a real villain. I should not have dared to look at anyone with such an indecent face. Another had such a filthy old uniform that one could not go near him without becoming aware of a bad smell. And yet these gentlemen did not seem to be in the least upset either about their clothes, or their faces, or the impression they created. Neither of them eve
r imagined that people looked at him with loathing; and I dare say it would not have made any difference to them if they had imagined it, so long as their superiors deigned to look at them. It is of course clear that, owing to my unbounded vanity and hence also to my over-sensitiveness where my own person was concerned, I often looked at myself with a sort of furious dissatisfaction which verged on loathing, and for that reason I could not help attributing my own views to other people. I hated my own face, for instance, finding it odious to a degree and even suspecting that it had rather a mean expression, and so every time I arrived at the office I went through agonies in my efforts to assume as independent an air as possible so as to make sure that my colleagues did not suspect me of meanness and so as to give my face as noble an expression as possible. “What do I care,” I thought to myself, “whether my face is ugly or not, so long as it is also noble, expressive, and, above all, extremely intelligent.” But I knew very well, I knew it agonisingly well, that it was quite impossible for my face to express such high qualities. But the really dreadful part of it was that I thought my face looked absolutely stupid. I would have been completely satisfied if it looked intelligent. Indeed, I’d have reconciled myself even to a mean expression so long as my face was at the same time generally admitted to be awfully intelligent.

  I need hardly say that I hated all my colleagues at the office, one and all, and that I despised them all, and yet at the same time I was also in a way afraid of them. It sometimes happened that I thought of them more highly than of myself. It was a feeling that somehow came upon me suddenly: one moment I despised them and the next moment I thought of them as above me. A decent, educated man cannot afford the luxury of vanity without being exceedingly exacting with himself and without occasionally despising himself to the point of hatred. But whether I despised them or thought them superior to me, I used to drop my eyes almost every time I met any one of them. I even used to make experiments to see whether I would be able to meet without flinching the look of one or another of my colleagues, and it was always I who dropped my eyes first. That irritated me to the point of madness. I was also morbidly afraid of appearing ridiculous and for that reason I slavishly observed all the social conventions: I enthusiastically followed in the beaten track and was mortally afraid of any eccentricity. But how could I hope to keep it up? I was so highly developed mentally, as indeed a man of our age should be. They, on the other hand, were all so stupidly dull and as like one another as so many sheep. Perhaps I was the only one in our office who constantly thought that he was a coward and a slave, and I thought that just because I was so highly developed mentally. But the truth is that it was not only a matter of my imagining it, but that it actually was so: I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age is, and indeed has to be, a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. I am absolutely convinced of that. He is made like that, and he has been created for that very purpose. And not only at the present time or as a result of some fortuitous circumstances, but at all times and in general a decent man has to be a coward and a slave. This is the law of nature for all decent men on earth. If one of them does sometimes happen to pluck up courage about something or other, he need not derive any comfort from it or be pleased about it: he is quite sure to make a fool of himself over something else. Such is the inevitable and eternal result of his being what he is. Only donkeys and mules pretend not to be afraid, and even they do it only up to a point. It is hardly worth while taking any notice of them, however, since they do not amount to anything, anyway.

  Another thing that used to worry me very much at that time was the quite incontestable fact that I was unlike anyone and that there was no one like me. “I am one, and they are all,” I thought and—fell into a melancholy muse.

  From all that it can be seen that I was still a very young man.

  Sometimes, though, quite the reverse used to happen. I would loathe the thought of going to the office, and things went so far that many times I used to come home ill. But suddenly and for no reason at all a mood of scepticism would come upon me (everything was a matter of moods with me), and I would myself laugh at my intolerance and sensitiveness and reproach myself with being a romantic. Sometimes I’d hate to talk to anyone, and at other times I’d not only talk to people, but would even take it into my head to be friends with them. All my fastidiousness would suddenly and for no reason in the world disappear. Who knows, maybe I really had never been fastidious, but just acquired a taste for appearing fastidious out of books. I haven’t thought of an answer to this question to this day. Once I got very friendly with them, began visiting their homes, playing preference, drinking vodka, talking of promotions.… But here you must let me make a digression.

  We Russians, generally speaking, have never had those stupid starry-eyed German and, still more, French romantics on whom nothing produces any effect; though the very ground cracked beneath their feet, though the whole of France perished at the barricades, they would still be the same and would not change even for the sake of appearances, and they would go on singing their highly romantic songs to their last breath, as it were, because they were fools. In Russia, however, there are no fools; that is a well known fact and that is what makes us so different from other countries. Therefore no starry-eyed natures, pure and simple, can be found among us. All that has been invented by our “positive” publicists and critics who at the time were chasing after Gogol’s and Goncharov’s idealised landowners and, in their folly, mistook them for our ideal; they have traduced our romantics, thinking them the same starry-eyed sort as in Germany or France. On the contrary, the characteristics of our romantics are the exact and direct opposite of the starry-eyed European variety, and not a single European standard applies here. (I hope you don’t mind my using the word “romantic”—it is an old, honourable, and highly estimable word and is familiar to all.) The characteristics of our romantic are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it incomparably more clearly than the most positive of our thinkers; to refuse to take anyone or anything for granted, but at the same time not to despise anything; to go round and round everything and to yield to everything out of policy; never to lose sight of the useful and the practical (rent-free quarters for civil servants, pensions of a sort, decorations)—and to discern this aim through all the enthusiasms and volumes of lyrical verses, and at the same time to preserve to his dying day a profound and indestructible respect for “the sublime and the beautiful,” and, incidentally, also to preserve himself like some precious jewel wrapt in cottonwool for the benefit, for instance, of the same “sublime and beautiful.” Our romantic is a man of great breadth of vision and the most consummate rascal of all our rascals, I assure you—from experience. That, of course, is all true if our romantic is intelligent. Good Lord, what am I saying? The romantic is always intelligent. I only meant to observe that even if there were fools among our romantics, they need not be taken into account for the simple reason that they had transformed themselves into Germans when still in their prime and, to preserve that pristine jewel-like purity of theirs, gone and settled somewhere abroad, preferably in Weimar or the Black Forest.

  Now, for instance, I had a sincere contempt for the Civil Service and if I did not show it, it was only out of sheer necessity, for I was myself sitting at a desk in a Government office and getting paid for it. As a result—note that, please!—I refrained from showing my contempt in any circumstances. Our romantic would sooner go off his head (which does not happen often, though) than show his contempt for his job if he has no other job in prospect, and he is never kicked out of a job, either, unless indeed he is carried off to a lunatic asylum as “the King of Spain,” but even then only if he should go stark raving mad. However, only the very thin and fair people go off their heads in Russia. An innumerable host of romantics, on the other hand, usually end up by becoming civil servants of the highest grade. Quite a remarkable versatility! And what an ability they possess for the most con
tradictory sensations! Even in those days this thought used to console me mightily, and I am still of the same opinion. That is why we have such a great number of “expansive” natures who do not lose sight of their ideal even when faced with the most catastrophic disaster; and though they never lift a finger for their ideal, though they are the most thorough-paced villains and thieves, they respect their original ideal, are ready to shed bitter tears for it and are, besides, quite remarkably honest at heart. Yes, gentlemen, it is only among us that the most arrant knave can be perfectly and even sublimely honest at heart without at the same time ceasing to be a knave. I repeat, I have seen our romantics over and over again grown into the most businesslike rascals (I use the word “rascals” affectionately); they suddenly acquire such a wonderful grasp of reality and such a thorough knowledge of the practical world that their astonished superiors in the Civil Service and the public at large can only click their tongues in utter stupefaction.

  Their many-sidedness is truly amazing, and goodness only knows into what it may be transformed and developed later on and what, as a result of it, the future may hold in store for us. And the material is far from unpromising! I do not say this out of some ridiculous or blustering patriotism. However, I’m sure you must be thinking again that I am pulling your legs. Well, I don’t know. Perhaps I am wrong. I mean, perhaps you are convinced that this really is my opinion. In either case, gentlemen, I shall consider both these views as a singular honour and a matter of special gratification to me. And you will forgive me for my digression, won’t you?

  My friendship with my colleagues did not of course last. Within a very short time I was at loggerheads with them again and, owing to my youthful inexperience at the time, I even stopped exchanging greetings with them and, so to speak, cut them. That, however, only happened to me once. Generally speaking, I was always alone.