The Eternal Husband

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  "Sleep, sleep," he repeated in a weak voice.

  "Right you are!" Pavel Pavlovich agreed.

  "You spend the night . . . what time is it?"

  "A quarter to two, sir."

  "Spend the night."

  "I will, I will."

  A minute later the sick man called Pavel Pavlovich again.

  "You, you," he murmured when the man came running and bent over him, "you—are better than I! I understand everything, everything . . . thank you."

  "Sleep, sleep," Pavel Pavlovich whispered, and hastened on tiptoe back to his sofa.

  As he was falling asleep, the sick man could still hear Pavel Pavlovich quietly and hurriedly making his bed, taking off his clothes, and, finally, putting out the candle and, barely breathing, so as not to make any noise, stretching himself out on the sofa.

  Undoubtedly Velchaninov did sleep and fell asleep very soon after the candles were put out; he clearly recalled it afterward. But all the while he slept, till the very moment he woke up, he dreamed that he was not asleep and that it was as if he was quite unable to fall asleep, despite his weakness. Finally, he dreamed he was having a sort of waking delirium and was quite unable to scatter the visions crowding around him, despite the full awareness that it was only delirium and not reality. The visions were all familiar ones; his room was as if filled with people, and the door to the front hall stood open; crowds of people poured in and thronged the stairs. At the table, moved out into the middle of the room, sat a man—exactly as the other time, in the identical dream he had had a month earlier. Just as then, this man sat with his elbow on the table and refused to speak; but now he was wearing a round hat with crape. "What? could it have been Pavel Pavlovich then, too?" Velchaninov thought—but, peeking into the silent man's face, he convinced himself that it was someone else entirely. "Why the crape, then?" Velchaninov puzzled. The noise, talk, and clamor of people crowding around the table were terrible. It seemed these people had still greater malice toward Velchaninov than in the other dream; they threatened him with their fists and shouted at him about something with all their might, but precisely what—he was quite unable to make out. "But this is a delirium, I know it!" the thought came to him. "I know that I couldn't fall asleep and have now gotten up, because I couldn't stay in bed from anguish!...” However, the shouting and the people, and their gestures, and all—were so vivid, so real, that he sometimes had doubts: "Can it really be a delirium? What do these people want from me, my God! But if it's not a delirium, then is it possible that such a clamor has not awakened Pavel Pavlovich yet? that he's here asleep, right here on the sofa?" Finally, something suddenly happened, again as in that other dream; everyone rushed to the stairs and got terribly jammed in the doorway, because a new crowd was pouring into the room from the stairs. These people were carrying something with them, something big and heavy; one could hear the heavy steps of the carriers resounding on the treads of the stairs and their puffing voices hurriedly calling to each other. Everyone in the room cried out: "They're bringing it, they're bringing it!" All eyes flashed and turned to Velchaninov; threatening and triumphant, everyone pointed to the stairs. No longer doubting in the least that it was all not delirium but the truth, he stood on tiptoe to see quickly, over people's heads, what it was that they were bringing. His heart was pounding, pounding, pounding, and suddenly—exactly as then, in that other dream—there came three loud strokes of the doorbell. And once again this was so clear, so tangibly real a ringing, that, of course, such ringing could not have been merely dreamed in a dream! . . . He cried out and woke up.

  But he did not, as then, go racing for the door. What thought guided his first movement and did he even have any sort of thought at that moment?—no, it was as if someone prompted him to what had to be done: he snatched himself from bed and rushed with outstretched arms, as if defending himself and warding off an attack, straight toward where Pavel Pavlovich lay sleeping. His arms at once met other arms already stretched out over him, and he seized them fast; someone therefore already stood bending over him. The curtains were drawn, but it was not totally dark, because a weak light was coming from the other room, where there were no such curtains. Suddenly something cut the palm and fingers of his left hand terribly painfully, and he instantly understood that he had seized the blade of a knife or razor and gripped it tightly in his hand ... At the same moment something fell with a single weighty thump to the floor.

  Velchaninov was perhaps three times stronger than Pavel Pavlovich, but their struggle continued for a long time, some three full minutes. He soon bent him down to the floor and twisted his arms behind his back, but for some reason he absolutely wanted to bind those twisted arms. With his right hand—his wounded left hand holding the murderer—he began to grope for the curtain cord, could not find it for a long time, but got hold of it at last and tore it from the window. He himself marveled later at the unnatural strength required for that. In all these three minutes neither of them said a word; one could hear only their heavy breathing and the muffled sounds of the struggle. Finally, having twisted and bound Pavel Pavlovich's arms behind his back, Velchaninov left him on the floor, stood up, opened the window curtain, and raised the blind. It was already light in the solitary street. Opening the window, he stood for a few moments taking deep breaths of air. It was just past four. Closing the window, he walked unhurriedly to the cupboard, took out a clean towel, and wound it very tightly around his left hand to stop the blood flowing from it. Under his feet he found the open razor lying on the rug; he picked it up, closed it, put it in the razor case, forgotten that morning on the little table just next to the sofa on which Pavel Pavlovich had slept, and locked this case in his bureau with a key. Only after doing all that did he go over to Pavel Pavlovich and begin studying him.

  The man had meanwhile managed with effort to get up from the rug and sit in an armchair. He was not dressed, only in his underwear, even without boots. The back and sleeves of his shirt were wet with blood; the blood was not his, but from Velchaninov's cut hand. Of course, this was Pavel Pavlovich, but it would almost have been possible not to recognize him in the first moment, if one had met him like that by chance— so much had his physiognomy changed. He sat awkwardly straight in the armchair because of his bound arms, his distorted and worn-out face gone green, and shivered from time to time. Intently, but with some dark look, as if not yet distinguishing everything, he gazed at Velchaninov. Suddenly he smiled dully and, nodding at the carafe of water that stood on the table, said in a short half whisper:

  "Some water, sir."

  Velchaninov poured some and held the glass for him to drink. Pavel Pavlovich greedily fell upon the water; having taken three gulps, he raised his head, looked very intently into the face of Velchaninov, who was standing before him with the glass in his hand, but said nothing and went on drinking. After finishing the water, he gave a deep sigh. Velchaninov took his pillow, picked up his clothes, and went to the other room, locking Pavel Pavlovich in the first room.

  His earlier pain had gone away completely, but he felt a new and extreme weakness after the momentary strain just now of that strength which had come to him from God knows where. He tried to sort the incident out, but his thoughts still connected poorly; the shock had been too strong. His eyes would now close, sometimes even for ten minutes, now he would suddenly give a start, wake up, remember everything, raise his aching hand wrapped in the blood-soaked towel, and start thinking greedily and feverishly. He decided only one thing clearly: that Pavel Pavlovich had really wanted to kill him, but that maybe a quarter of an hour before then he had not known he would kill him. The razor case had maybe only flitted past his eyes during the evening without provoking any thought, and had merely stayed in his memory. (As for the razors, they were always kept in his bureau under lock and key, and it was only the previous morning that Velchaninov had taken them out to shave off some superfluous hairs around his mustache and side-whiskers—something he used to do occasionally.)

  "If he ha
d long been planning to kill me, he would have made sure to prepare a knife or a pistol beforehand, and not have counted on my razors, which he had never seen until yesterday evening"—came to his head, among other things.

  It finally struck six. Velchaninov collected himself, got dressed, and went to Pavel Pavlovich. Unlocking the door, he could not understand what he had locked Pavel Pavlovich in for and why he had not let him out of the house then and there. To his surprise, the arrested man was already fully dressed; he must have found some opportunity for disentangling himself. He was sitting in the armchair, but got up at once, as soon as Velchaninov entered. The hat was already in his hand. His anxious eyes said, as if hurrying:

  "Don't start talking; there's no point in starting; there's no reason to talk...”

  "Go!" said Velchaninov. "Take your case," he added behind him.

  Pavel Pavlovich came back from the door, took the case with the bracelet from the table, put it in his pocket, and walked out to the stairs. Velchaninov stood in the doorway to lock up after him. Their eyes met for the last time. Pavel Pavlovich suddenly stopped, the two gazed into each other's eyes for some five seconds—as if hesitating; finally, Velchaninov waved his arm weakly at him.

  "Well, go!" he said in a half voice, closed the door, and locked it.

  XVI: Analysis

  A feeling of extraordinary, immense joy came over him; something was finished, unbound; some terrible anguish loosened and dispersed altogether. So it seemed to him. It had lasted five weeks. He kept raising his hand, looking at the blood-soaked towel, and muttering to himself: "No, now it's all completely finished!" And all that morning, for the first time in those three weeks, he almost did not think of Liza—as if this blood from his cut fingers could "square accounts" even with that anguish.

  He was clearly conscious that he had escaped terrible danger. "These people," went through his mind, "it's these very people who, even a minute before, don't know if they're going to stab you, but once they take the knife in their trembling hands and feel the first spurt of hot blood on their fingers, they won't just stab you—they'll cut your head 'clean off,' as convicts say. It's quite so."

  He could not stay home and went out convinced that it was necessary to do something right away, or else right away something was sure to be done to him of itself; he walked the streets and waited. He wanted terribly to meet someone, to talk with someone, even a stranger, and only that, finally, suggested to him the thought of a doctor and that his hand probably ought to be properly bandaged. The doctor, an old acquaintance, after examining the wound, asked curiously: "How could this have happened?" Velchaninov laughed him off, joked, and almost told all, but restrained himself. The doctor was obliged to take his pulse and, on learning of the previous night's attack, talked him there and then into taking a calmative he had on hand. He also calmed him down regarding the cut: "There can be no especially bad consequences." Velchaninov laughed loudly and started assuring him that there had already been excellent consequences. The irrepressible desire to tell all repeated itself with him two more times that day—once even with a total stranger with whom he himself started a conversation in a pastry shop. Up to then he had hated starting conversations with strangers in public places.

  He stopped at shops, bought a newspaper, called at his tailor's and ordered some clothes. The thought of visiting the Pogoreltsevs continued to be disagreeable to him, and he did not think about them; besides, he could not go to the country: it was as if he kept expecting something here in town. He dined with pleasure, talked with the waiter and with a neighboring diner, and drank half a bottle of wine. He did not even think of the possibility of yesterday's attack coming back; he was convinced that his illness had gone completely the very moment yesterday when, having fallen asleep so strengthless, he had jumped from his bed an hour and a half later and with such strength hurled his murderer to the floor. Toward evening, however, he felt dizzy and it was as if something like last night's delirium in sleep began to come over him again at moments. He returned home at dusk and was almost scared of his room when he entered it. Dreadful and eerie his apartment seemed to him. He walked around it several times and even went into his kitchen, where he hardly ever went. "They heated the plates here yesterday," came to his mind. He locked the door well and lit the candles earlier than usual. As he was locking the door, he remembered that half an hour before, passing by the caretaker's room, he had called Mavra out and asked her: "Hadn't Pavel Pavlovich come by while he was out?"—as if he might really have come by.

  Having locked himself in carefully, he unlocked his bureau, took out the case of razors, and opened "yesterday's" razor to have a look at it. On the white bone handle slight traces of blood remained. He put the razor back into the case and locked it up in the bureau again. He wanted to sleep; he felt that it was necessary to lie down right away—otherwise "tomorrow he won't be good for anything." For some reason he imagined the next day as fatal and "definitive." But the same thoughts that had never left him for a moment all day, even outside, also crowded and throbbed in his sick head now, tirelessly and irresistibly, and he kept thinking, thinking, thinking, and it would be a long time before he fell asleep . . .

  "If we decide that he got up to kill me inadvertently," he kept thinking and thinking, "then had the thought come to him at least once before, at least as a dream in some wicked moment?"

  He decided the question strangely—that "Pavel Pavlovich had wanted to kill him, but the thought of the killing had never once occurred to the future killer." In short: "Pavel Pavlovich had wanted to kill, but hadn't known that he wanted to kill. It's senseless, but it's so," thought Velchaninov. "He came here not to solicit a post and not for Bagautov— though he did solicit a post and call on Bagautov, and was furious when the man died; he despised Bagautov like a chip of wood. He came here for me and came with Liza . . .

  "And did I myself expect that he . . . would put a knife in me?" He decided that, yes, he had expected it precisely from the very moment he had seen him in the coach following Bagautov's coffin. "I began as if to expect something . . . but, naturally, not this, naturally, not that he would put a knife in me! . . .

  "And can it be, can it be that it was all true," he exclaimed again, suddenly raising his head from the pillow and opening his eyes, "all that this . . . madman told me yesterday about his love for me, when his chin trembled and he beat his breast with his fist?

  "Perfectly true!" he decided, tirelessly delving deeper and analyzing. "This Quasimodo from T—is only too sufficiently stupid and noble to fall in love with the lover of his wife, in whom, for twenty years, he noticed nothing. He respected me for nine years, he honored my memory and remembered my 'utterances'—Lord, and I had no idea of anything! He couldn't have been lying yesterday! But did he love me yesterday when he talked about his love and said: 'Let's square accounts'? Yes, loved me from spite; that's the strongest love . . .

  "And it could have been, and certainly was so, that I produced a colossal impression on him in T—, precisely a colossal and a 'delightful' one, and it's precisely with such a Schiller in the shape of Quasimodo that that could happen! He exaggerated me a hundredfold, because I struck him too much in his philosophical solitude ... It would be curious to know, precisely what about me struck him? Really, it might have been fresh gloves and knowing how to put them on. Quasimodos love aesthetics, oh, how they do! Gloves are all too sufficient for some most noble soul, the more so for one of the 'eternal husbands.' The rest they'll fill out a thousandfold and they'll even fight for you if you want. And how highly he rates my means of seduction! Maybe it's precisely the means of seduction that struck him most of all. And that cry of his then: 'If even this one as well, then who can one believe in after that?' After such a cry, one could turn into a beast! . . .

  "Hm! He came here so that we could 'embrace each other and weep,' as he himself put it in the meanest way—that is, he was coming in order to put a knife in me, but thought he was coming 'to embrace and weep' . . . And he b
rought Liza. What, then: if I had wept with him, maybe he would in fact have forgiven me, because he wanted terribly to forgive! . . . All this turned, at the first encounter, into drunken clowning and caricature, and into a vile, womanish howling about being offended. (The horns, he made horns over his forehead!) That's why he came drunk, so as to speak it out, even while clowning; he couldn't do it not drunk . . . And he did like clowning, oh, how he did! Oh, how glad he was when he made me kiss him! Only he didn't know then what he would end with: embracing or killing. It came out, of course, that the best would be both together. The most natural solution!—Yes, sir, nature doesn't like monsters and finishes them off with 'natural solutions.' The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings: I know it from my own experience, Pavel Pavlovich! For a monster, nature is not a tender mother, she's a stepmother. Nature gives birth to a monster, and, instead of pitying him, executes him—and right she is. Even decent folk in our time don't get off easily with embraces and tears of all-forgiveness, to say nothing of such as you and I, Pavel Pavlovich!

  "Yes, he was stupid enough to take me to his fiancee as well—Lord! His fiancee! Only such a Quasimodo could conceive the thought of 'resurrection into a new life'—by means of Mademoiselle Zakhlebinin's innocence! But it's not your fault, Pavel Pavlovich, it's not your fault: you're a monster, and therefore everything in you must be monstrous—both your dreams and your hopes. But, though you're a monster, you still doubted your dream, and that's why you required the high sanction of Velchaninov, the reverently respected. He needed Velchaninov's approval, his confirmation that the dream was not a dream but the real thing. Out of reverent respect for me, he took me there, believing in the nobility of my feelings—believing, perhaps, that there, under a bush, we'd embrace each other and weep, in the proximity of innocence. Yes! and this 'eternal husband' was bound, he was obliged, finally, to punish himself definitively for everything sometime or other, and in order to punish himself, he seized the razor—inadvertently, it's true, but even so he did it! 'Even so he did stab him with a knife, even so he ended by stabbing him, in the governor's presence!' And, by the way, did he have at least some thought of that sort when he was telling me his anecdote about the best man? And was there in fact something that night when he got out of bed and stood in the middle of the room? Hm. No, he stood there as a joke then. He got up for his own business, and when he saw that I was afraid of him, he refused to answer me for ten minutes, because he found it very pleasant that I was afraid of him . . . Maybe it was then that he really imagined something for the first time, as he was standing there in the dark . . .