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

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  She went up to the bed and stood over me. I heard everything. The silence in the room was so deep that I could hear it. All at once I became conscious of one spasmodic movement, and I opened my eyes suddenly, irresistibly, against my will. She was looking straight at me. Straight into my eyes. And the gun was already near my temple. Our eyes met. But we looked at each other for no more than a second. With a great effort I closed my eyes again, and in that instant I resolved with all the strength I possessed not to make another movement, not to open my eyes, whatever happened.

  And it does happen of course that a man who is fast asleep suddenly opens his eyes, raises his head just for a second, and looks round the room, then a moment later quite unconsciously replaces his head on the pillow and falls asleep without remembering anything. When, after meeting her glance and feeling the gun at my temple, I suddenly shut my eyes and did not stir, she certainly could have assumed that I was really asleep and that I had seen nothing, particularly as it is scarcely conceivable that, having seen what I had seen, I should at such a moment have closed my eyes again.

  Yes, it was inconceivable. And yet she could have guessed the truth all the same. It was that thought that flashed through my mind suddenly, at one and the same instant, and—three cheers for the lightning speed of human thought! If that was so (I felt), if she guessed the truth and knew that I was not asleep, then I had crushed her already by my readiness to accept death, and now her hand might falter. Her former determination might be shattered against a new startling impression. It is said that people standing on a great height seem to be irresistibly drawn into the abyss. I suppose many suicides and murders have been committed only because the gun was already in the hand of the murderer or self-destroyer. Here, too, is a yawning chasm. Here, too, is a declivity, a slope at an angle of forty-five degrees, on which it is impossible not to slip, and something seems to force you irresistibly to pull the trigger. But the knowledge that I had seen everything, that I knew everything, and that I was waiting for death at her hands in silence, could have checked her on that slope.

  The silence continued, and suddenly I felt the cold touch of steel at my temple, at my hair. You will ask me, did I have any hope of escape? I will answer you—and God knows I am speaking the truth—none at all, not an atom of hope, except perhaps one chance in a hundred. Why, then, did I accept death? Well, let me ask you in turn: of what use was life to me after a gun had been levelled against me by a human being I adored? Besides, I realise with the whole force of my being that at that very moment a struggle was going on between us, a life and death struggle, a duel in which I—the coward of the day before who had been expelled by his fellow-officers for cowardice—was engaged. I knew it, and she knew it too, if she had guessed the truth and knew that I was not asleep.

  Perhaps nothing of the sort really happened. Perhaps I never had those thoughts at the time. But all that must have taken place even without conscious thought, yet I have done nothing but think of it every moment of my life since.

  But (you will ask again) why did I not save her from so heinous a crime? Oh, I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times since, every time when, with a cold shiver down my back, I have called that moment to mind. But my soul was then sunk in black despair: I was in mortal peril, I myself was on the very brink of total extinction, so how could I have saved anyone? And, besides, what makes you think that I wanted to save anyone at that moment? How can one tell what I was feeling then?

  But all the time my mind was in a turmoil. The seconds passed. There was a dead silence. She still stood over me. Then all of a sudden I gave a start as hope returned to me. I opened my eyes quickly. She was no longer in the room. I got out of bed: I had conquered and she was conquered for ever.

  I went out to have my tea. Tea was as a rule served in the other room, and she herself poured it out. I sat down at the table without uttering a word and took a glass of tea from her. About five minutes later I glanced at her. She was dreadfully pale, paler even than the night before, and she looked at me. And suddenly—suddenly—seeing that I was looking at her, she smiled palely with her pale lips, with a timid question in her eyes. “So she is still uncertain, she is still asking herself: does he or doesn’t he know? did he or didn’t he see?” I averted my eyes with a look of indifference.

  After tea I locked up the shop, went to the market and bought an iron bedstead and a screen. On returning home, I had the bed put in the front room and the screen round it. That bed was for her. But I never said a word to her. She understood without words. The bed made her realise that “I saw everything and knew everything,” and that there could be no more any doubt about that.

  That night I left the gun on the table as usual. She crept silently into her new bed at night: our marriage was dissolved. “She was conquered but not forgiven.” During the night she became delirious and in the morning she was in a high fever. She was in bed for six weeks.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  A DREAM OF PRIDE

  Lukerya has just told me that she will not remain with me and that she will leave immediately after the funeral of her mistress. I knelt and prayed for five minutes. I wanted to pray for an hour, but all the time I kept thinking, thinking—and all such aching thoughts, and my head aches—what’s the use of praying?—it’s a sin! It is strange too that I should not be able to sleep. When one is unhappy, especially when one is very unhappy, one always feels like sleeping after the first violent outbursts of grief. Men condemned to death, I’m told, sleep very soundly indeed on the last night. And so it ought to be. It is only natural. Or they would not have been able to endure it. I lay down on the sofa, but I could not fall asleep.

  —–

  … She was ill for six weeks, and we looked after her day and night, Lukerya and I and the trained nurse I had engaged from the hospital. I did not care how much money it cost me. On the contrary, I liked spending money on her. I called in Dr. Schroeder, and I paid him ten roubles for a visit. When she regained consciousness, I stopped going into her room unless it was absolutely necessary. However, why am I describing all this? When she got up at last, she sat down quietly and silently in my room at the special table I had also bought for her at the time. Yes, it is quite true: neither of us spoke at all. I mean, later on we did begin talking to each other, but just the usual things. Of course, I spoke as little as possible on purpose; but she, too, I could see very well, was glad not to have to say an unnecessary word. I thought that quite natural on her part. “She is too shaken and too subdued,” I thought to myself, “and she must of course be given time to forget and to get used to things.” And so it was that we were silent. But every minute I was preparing myself for the future. I could not help thinking that she was doing the same, and I found it extremely diverting to try and guess what she was thinking of just then.

  One more thing I will say: no one, of course, oh, no one in the world, knew of the agonies I suffered during her illness. I kept my worries to myself and did not even let Lukerya see how troubled I was. I couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t even admit to myself, the possibility that she might die before learning the truth, the whole truth. But when she was out of danger and began to regain her health, I recovered my composure, I remember, very quickly and completely. And that was not all. I made up my mind to put off our future for as long a time as possible and for the time being to leave things as they were. Yes, just then something strange and peculiar happened to me (I don’t know how else to describe it): I had triumphed, and the consciousness of that was quite sufficient for me. And so the whole winter passed. Oh, I was pleased as I had never been pleased in my life, and that all through the winter.

  You see, there had been a most terrible event in my life which until then, that is to say, until the disastrous incident with my wife, weighed heavily upon my mind every day and every hour of the day: the loss of my reputation and my forced retirement from the army. To put it in a nutshell: I had been the victim of a most abominable injustice. It is tru
e that my fellow-officers never liked me for my difficult character, and perhaps even for my absurd character, my ridiculous character, though it often happens that what you regard as great, what is dear to you, what you esteem most highly, strikes your friends for some unaccountable reason as extremely funny. Oh, I was never liked at school. People never liked me. Never at any time. Even Lukerya finds it impossible to like me. While, however, the incident in the regiment undoubtedly arose out of this general unpopularity of mine, its direct cause was quite certainly due to an accident. I am saying this because I don’t think there can be anything more aggravating and intolerable than to be ruined by an accident which might or might not have happened, by a fortuitous concatenation of circumstances which might have passed away like a cloud. For a man of education nothing can be more humiliating.

  Now what had happened was this:

  During an interval at the play I went out to the bar which was crowded with people, including a large number of army officers. While I was there, the hussar officer A—v came in suddenly and began talking in a loud voice to two other hussar officers. He was telling them about Captain Bezumtsev of our regiment who (so he said) had just created a disturbance, and who (he added) “seems to be drunk.” The subject was soon dropped. Besides, the whole story was a mistake, for Captain Bezumtsev was not drunk at all, and the disturbance was not really a disturbance, either. The hussars began talking about something else, and that was the end of it. But next day the story reached our regiment, and of course the fact that I was the only officer of our regiment in the bar at once became the subject of general talk. It was remarked that when the hussar A—v had spoken so insolently about Captain Bezumtsev, I had not gone over to him immediately and stopped him by rapping him on the knuckles. But why on earth should I have done that? If he had a bone to pick with Bezumtsev, it was their own personal affair and no business of mine. The officers of my regiment meanwhile decided that it was not a personal affair at all but concerned the whole regiment. And since I was the only officer of our regiment present, I had by my failure to take action shown both to the officers and the civilians in the bar that there were officers in the regiment who did not care a damn for their honour or for the honour of their regiment. I could not agree with such an interpretation. I was given to understand that I could still put everything right, late though it was, if I demanded a formal explanation from A—v. This I did not choose to do. In fact, I resented the whole thing most violently. I would not compromise with my pride, and refused to have anything to do with their suggestion. I then at once resigned my commission. That is the whole story. I left the regiment a proud, but a broken man. Both my will and my mind had suffered a bad shock. As it happened, my sister’s husband in Moscow just then squandered our small family fortune, including my own part in it (a tiny part, it is true), and I was left without a penny in the world. I could have got myself some civilian job, but I didn’t. After my splendid uniform, I wasn’t going to become some railway official. And so—if it had to be shame, then let it be shame; if it had to be disgrace, then let it be disgrace; if it had to be degradation, then let it be degradation—the worse the better! That was my choice. Then followed three years of terrible deprivation and horror, and even Vyazemsky’s dosshouse. A year and a half ago my godmother, a wealthy old lady, died in Moscow and among other bequests she quite unexpectedly left me three thousand roubles in her will. I thought things over and there and then decided what I was going to do with myself. I made up my mind that I would become a pawnbroker and ask no favours from anyone. First I must get money, then a home of my own, and then a new life far away from the memories of the past. That was my plan. Nevertheless, my sombre past and a reputation ruined for ever were a constant source of mental anguish to me. The memory of it haunted me every day, every minute. And then I got married. Whether by chance or not—I don’t know. But when I brought her into my home, I thought I was bringing a friend, and it was a friend I needed most of all. But a friend had to be taken in hand, licked into shape, and—yes—even mastered. And how could I possibly explain it all at once to a sixteen-year-old girl, and one, besides, who was prejudiced against me? For instance, could I have convinced her that I was not a coward without the accidental assistance of the dreadful incident with the gun? Could I have convinced her that I had been falsely accused of cowardice in the regiment? But that dreadful incident came just in the nick of time. Having passed the test of the gun, I avenged the whole of my horrible past. And though no one knew about it, she knew, and that meant everything to me because she herself was everything to me. All the hopes of a bright future that I cherished in my dreams! She was the only person I had hoped to make my true friend in life, and I had no need of anyone else. And now she knew everything. At least she knew that she had been too hasty in joining the camp of my enemies. That thought filled me with delight. In her eyes I could no longer be a blackguard, but at most perhaps a queer fellow; and even that, after all that had happened, was not at all displeasing to me. Queerness is not a vice in a man; on the contrary, it often exercises a powerful attraction on a woman’s imagination. In fact, I deliberately postponed the final explanation. What had happened was for the moment quite sufficient for my peace of mind. It contained too many exciting scenes and a lot of material for my dreams. You see, the whole trouble is that I am a dreamer: I was quite satisfied to have enough material for my dreams. As for her, she, I thought, could wait.

  So the whole winter passed in a sort of expectation of something. I liked to steal a glance at her now and again when she sat at her little table. She was busy with her work, her sewing, and sometimes in the evening she would read books taken from my book-case. The choice of books in the book-case should also have spoken in my favour. She hardly ever went out. Every day after dinner, before dusk, I used to take her out for a walk. We took our constitutional, and not entirely in silence as before. At least, I did my best to pretend that we were not silent and that we were talking amicably together. But, as I have already said, we both saw to it that our talks were not too long. I did it on purpose, and as for her, I thought, it was important “to give her time.” It is, I admit, strange that not once till the end of the winter did it occur to me that while I liked looking at her stealthily, I had never during all those winter months caught her looking at me! I ascribed it to her shyness. And indeed her whole appearance did convey a picture of such gentleness, such utter exhaustion after her illness. No, thought I, don’t interfere with her. Better wait and—“she will come to you all of a sudden and of her own free will.…”

  The thought filled me with intense delight. I will add one more thing: sometimes I would, as though on purpose, so inflame my own mind that I’d in fact succeed in working myself up into a mental and emotional rage against her. And it went on like that for some time. But my hatred of her could never ripen or strike roots in my heart. And, besides, I couldn’t help feeling myself that it was only a sort of game I was playing. Why, even when I had dissolved our marriage by buying the bed and the screen, I could never for one moment look upon her as a criminal. And not because I took too light a view of her crime, but because I had the sense to forgive her completely, from the very first day, even before I purchased the bed. That, I confess, was a little odd on my part, for where morals are concerned I am very strict. On the contrary, in my eyes she was so thoroughly subdued, so thoroughly humiliated, so thoroughly crushed that I could not help feeling horribly sorry for her sometimes, though, for all that, the idea of her humiliation was at times certainly very pleasing to me. What pleased me was the idea of our inequality.…

  That winter I happened to be responsible for a few acts of real kindness. I remitted two debts and I advanced money to one poor woman without a pledge. And I never breathed a word about it to my wife. Nor did I do it at all so that she should learn about it. But the woman herself came to thank me, and almost on her knees. In that way it became public property. I could not help thinking that she had learnt about the woman with real pleasure.<
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  But spring was close at hand. It was mid-April. We took out our double windows, and bright shafts of sunlight began lighting up our rooms. But the scales still covered my eyes and blinded my reason. Oh, those fatal, those dreadful scales! How did it all happen that the scales suddenly fell from my eyes and that I suddenly saw and understood everything? Was it chance? Did the appointed day come at last? Was it a ray of sunshine that suddenly kindled a thought or a surmise in my dull brain? No. It was neither a thought nor a surmise. It was a chord that had been mute a long time and that now came to life and began vibrating suddenly, flooding my darkened mind with light and showing up my devilish pride. I felt as though I had leapt to my feet. It all happened with such incredible suddenness. It happened towards evening, at about five o’clock, after dinner.…

  II

  THE SCALES SUDDENLY FALL

  Just two words before I go on. Already a month ago I noticed a strange wistfulness about her. She was not only silent. She was also wistful. Of that, too, I became aware all of a sudden. She was sitting and sewing something at the time, her head bent over her work, and she did not see that I was looking at her. It suddenly struck me how thin she looked, how haggard, her face so pale, her lips so white, and this together with her wistfulness came as a great shock to me. I had already before heard her little dry cough, especially at night. I got up at once and went out to see Schroeder without saying anything about it to her.

  Schroeder came next day. She was very much surprised, her eyes wandering from Schroeder to me and back again.

  “But I’m quite all right,” she said with a sort of vague smile.

  Schroeder did not examine her very carefully (those doctors are sometimes so maddeningly off-hand), but told me in the other room that she was suffering from the aftereffects of her illness and that it would not be a bad idea to take her to the sea-side in the spring or, if that were impossible, to take a country cottage for the summer. He did not say anything, in fact, except that there was a weakness or something of the sort. When Schroeder had gone she suddenly said to me, looking very gravely at me: