Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  I don’t know if this is true of idealists in general, but it was entirely true of him, no doubt. I may perhaps add here my own judgment, which flashed across my mind while I was listening to him then: I thought that he loved mother, more so to say with the humane love one feels for all mankind, than with the simple love with which women are loved as a rule, and that as soon as he met a woman whom he began to love with that simple love, he at once turned against that love — most probably because the feeling was new to him. Perhaps, though, this idea is incorrect; I did not of course utter it to him. It would have been indelicate, and he really was in such a condition that it was almost necessary to spare him: he was agitated; at some points in his story he simply broke off, and was silent for some moments, walking about the room with a vindictive face.

  She soon divined his secret. Oh, perhaps she flirted with him on purpose; even the most candid women are base in these cases, and it is their overwhelming instinct. It ended in a rupture full of rankling bitterness, and I believe he tried to kill her; he frightened her, and would have killed her, perhaps, “but it was all turned to hatred.” Then there came a strange period: he was suddenly possessed by the strange idea of torturing himself by a discipline, “the same as that used by the monks. Gradually, by systematic practice, you overcome your will, beginning with the most absurd and trivial things, and end by conquering your will completely, and become free.” He added that this practice of the monks is a serious thing; in the course of a thousand years it has been brought by them to a science. But what is most remarkable is that he gave himself up to this idea of discipline, not in order to get rid of the image of Katerina Nikolaevna, but in the full conviction that he had not only ceased to love her, but hated her. He so thoroughly believed in his hatred for her as to conceive the idea of loving and marrying her step-daughter, who had been seduced by Prince Sergay, to persuade himself absolutely of this new love, and to win the poor imbecile’s heart completely, by his devotion making her perfectly happy. Why, instead of devoting himself to her, he did not think of mother, who was all this time waiting for him at Königsberg, remained for me inexplicable. . . . He quite forgot mother, indeed, and even neglected to send money for her maintenance, so that Tatyana Pavlovna had to come to her rescue; yet finally he did go to mother “to ask her permission” to marry the young lady, pleading that “such a bride was not a woman.” Oh, perhaps all this is only a portrait of a theoretical man, as Katerina Nikolaevna said of him later. But why is it, though, that these theoretical people (if they really are theoretical people) are capable of such very real suffering, and end in such very real tragedy? On that evening, however, I looked at it differently, and I was disturbed by the thought:

  “All your development, your whole soul, has been won by the suffering and the struggle of your whole life, while her perfection has cost her nothing. That’s unjust. . . . Woman is revolting in that way.” I said this without the least intention of flattering him, speaking with warmth and indignation.

  “Perfection? Her perfection? But she has no sort of perfection!” he said suddenly, seeming almost surprised at my words. “She is the most ordinary woman, she is really a contemptible woman. . . . But she is bound to have every perfection!”

  “Why is she bound to?”

  “Because she has such power, she is bound to have every sort of perfection!” he cried vindictively.

  “The saddest thing is that you are so harassed even now,” I could not help blurting out suddenly.

  “How harassed!” he repeated my words again, standing still before me as though in some perplexity. And suddenly a slow, gentle, dreamy smile lighted up his whole face, and he held up his finger as though considering. Then as though waking up, he took from the table an open letter, and flung it down in front of me.

  “Read it! You must know everything . . . and why have you made me rake up all this bygone foolishness? . . . It has only roused up nasty and spiteful feelings in my heart. . . .”

  I cannot describe my astonishment. The letter was from her to him, received by him that afternoon at five o’clock. I read it, almost shaking with emotion. It was not long, and was written so simply and straightforwardly, that as I read it I seemed to see her before me and hear her words. With the most simple truthfulness (and so almost touchingly) she confessed her terror, and then simply besought him to “leave her in peace.” In conclusion, she told him that she definitely was to marry Büring. Till then she had never written a word to him.

  And this is what I could make out of his explanation:

  As soon as he had read the letter that day, he was aware of a new sensation: for the first time in those fatal two years he felt not the slightest hatred for her, or the slightest shock of emotion, such as had “driven him out of his mind” at a mere rumour of Büring. “On the contrary, I sent her my blessing, with perfect sincerity,” he told me, with deep feeling. I heard these words with ecstasy. Then all the passion and agony that had possessed him had vanished all at once of itself, like a dream, like an obsession that had lasted two years. Hardly yet able to believe in himself he hastened to mother’s and — arrived at the very moment when she was set free by the death of the old man who had bequeathed her to him. The coincidence of these two events had deeply stirred his soul. Not long afterwards he rushed to find me — and that immediate thought of me I shall never forget.

  I shall never forget the end of that evening either. The whole man was suddenly transformed again. We did not separate till late at night. The effect that all he told me had upon me I will describe later, in its proper place, and will confine myself now to a few words, in conclusion, about him. Reflecting upon it now, I realize that what captivated me so much at the time was his humility, so to speak, with me, his frank sincerity with a boy like me! “It was infatuation, but my blessings on it!” he exclaimed. “But for that blind obsession I might perhaps have never discovered in my heart my sole queen, my suffering darling — your mother.” These passionate words, wrung from him by over-mastering feeling, I note particularly, in view of what followed. But at the time he gained complete possession of my heart and conquered it.

  I remember in the end we became very cheerful. He asked for some champagne, and we drank to mother, and to the “future.” Oh, he was so full of life, and so eager to live! But we suddenly became extremely merry, not from the wine: we only drank two glasses. I don’t know why, but in the end we laughed almost helplessly. We began talking of quite extraneous matters; he began telling me an anecdote and I told him one. And our laughter and our anecdotes, were by no means malicious or amusing, but we were merry. He was unwilling to let me go: “Stay, stay a little longer,” he repeated, and I stayed. He even came out to see me home; it was an exquisite evening, with a slight frost. “Tell me, have you sent her an answer yet?” I asked, quite casually, as I pressed his hand for the last time at the cross road.

  “No, not yet, but that’s no matter. Come to-morrow, come early. . . . Oh, and another thing: drop Lambert altogether and tear up that ‘document,’ and make haste about it. Goodbye!”

  Saying this he went away quickly; I remained standing still, and so much taken aback that I could not bring myself to call after him. The expression, the “document,” startled me particularly: how could he have known of it, and that particular word too, if not from Lambert? I went home in great confusion. And how can it have happened, the question flashed upon me suddenly, that such an obsession for two years can have vanished like a dream, like a vapour, like a phantom.

  CHAPTER IX

  1

  But I waked up next morning feeling fresher and in better heart. I unconsciously reproached myself, indeed, with perfect sincerity, for a certain levity, and, as it were, superciliousness, with which it seemed to me, recalling it, I had listened to some parts of his “confession” the evening before. Supposing it had been to some extent muddled, and some revelations had been, as it were, a little delirious and incoherent, he had not, of course, prepared to deliver a speech when
he invited me the day before. He had simply done me a great honour in turning to me, as his one friend at such a moment, and I shall never forget his doing it. On the contrary, his confession was “touching,” though people may laugh at me for saying so, and if there were glimpses from time to time of something cynical, or even something that seemed ridiculous, I was not so narrow as to be unable to understand and accept realism, which did not, however, detract from the ideal. The great point was now that I understood the man, and I even felt, and was almost vexed at feeling, that it had all turned out to be so simple: I had always in my heart set that man on a supreme pinnacle, in the clouds, and had insisted on shrouding his life in mystery, so that I had naturally wished not to fit the key to it so easily.

  In his meeting WITH HER, however, and in the sufferings he had endured for two years, there was much that was complex. “He did not want to live under the yoke of fate; he wanted to be free, and not a slave to fate; through his bondage to fate he had been forced to hurt mother, who was still waiting for him at Königsberg. . . .” Besides, I looked upon him in any case as a preacher: he cherished in his heart the golden age, and knew all about the future of atheism; and then the meeting with HER had shattered everything, distorted everything! Oh, I was not a traitor to her, but still I was on his side. Mother, for instance, I reflected, would have been no hindrance, nor would marriage with her be so indeed. That I understood; that was something utterly different from his meeting with THAT WOMAN. Mother, it is true, would not have given him peace either, but that was all the better: one cannot judge of such men as of others, and their life must always be different; and that’s not unseemly at all; on the contrary, it would be unseemly if they settled down and became altogether like other ordinary people. His praises of the nobility, and his words: “Je mourrai gentilhomme,” did not disconcert me in the least; I understood what sort of gentilhomme he was; he was a man ready to abandon everything, and to become the champion of political rights for all, and the leading Russian thought of a universal harmony of ideas. And even though all this might be nonsense, that is “the universal harmony of ideas” (which is of course inconceivable), yet the very fact that he had all his life bowed down to an idea, and not to the stupid golden calf, was good. My God! why, conceiving “my idea,” had I, I myself — could I — have been bowing down to the golden calf, could I have been aiming only at money, then? I swear that all I wanted was the idea! I swear I would not have had one chair, one sofa upholstered in velvet, and I would have eaten the same plate of soup as now, if I had had millions. I dressed and hurried off impatiently to see him. I may add that in regard to his outburst yesterday about the “document,” I was ever so much more at ease in my mind than I had been the day before. To begin with, I hoped to have it out with him, and besides, what was there in Lambert’s having wormed his way in to him, and having talked to him of something? But what rejoiced me most was an extraordinary sensation: it came from the thought that “he no longer loved HER”; I put absolute faith in it, and felt as if some one had lifted a fearful weight off my heart. I recall a conjecture that flashed upon me at the time: that the unseemliness and senselessness of his last violent outbreak, on hearing about Büring, and the sending of that insulting letter, that that final crisis might be taken as a sign and augury of a change in his feeling, and an approaching return to sanity; it must be as it is in illness, I thought, and, in fact, he is bound to reach the opposite extreme, it is a pathological episode, and nothing more.

  This thought made me happy.

  “And let her arrange her life as she pleases, let her marry her Büring as much as she likes, so long as he, my father, my friend, loves her no longer,” I exclaimed.

  I had, however, certain secret feelings of my own, on which I do not care to enlarge in my notes here.

  That’s enough. And now, without further reflections, I will give an account of the awful event that followed, and how the facts worked together to bring it about.

  2

  At ten o’clock, just as I was getting ready to go out, to see him of course, Darya Onisimovna appeared. I asked her joyfully: “whether she came from him?” and heard with vexation that she did not come from him, but from Anna Andreyevna, and that she, Darya Onisimovna, “had left the lodging as soon as it was light.”

  “What lodging?”

  “Why, the same where you were yesterday. You know, the lodging where you were yesterday, where the baby is; it is taken in my name now, and Tatyana Pavlovna pays the rent. . . .”

  “Oh, well, that’s nothing to me!” I interrupted with annoyance. “Is he at home, anyway? Shall I find him?”

  And to my surprise I heard from her that he had gone out even before she had; so she had gone out as soon as it was light, and he had gone out even earlier.

  “Then has he come back yet?”

  “No, he’s certainly not back yet, and perhaps he won’t come back at all,” she declared, turning upon me the same sharp and furtive eye, and keeping it fixed on me, as she had done on the occasion I have described, when she visited me as I lay ill in bed. What infuriated me most was that their mysteries and imbecilities should be forced on me again, and that these people could not get on without secrets and intrigues.

  “Why do you say: ‘he will certainly not come back’? What do you mean by that? He has gone to see mother, that’s all!”

  “I d — don’t know.”

  “And what have you come for?”

  She told me that she had just come from Anna Andreyevna, who had sent her for me, and urgently expected me at once, or else it would be “too late.” These last enigmatic words finally exasperated me:

  “Why too late? I don’t want to come and I’m not coming! I won’t let them take possession of me again! I don’t care a damn for Lambert, you can tell her so, and if she sends Lambert to me, I’ll kick him out, you can tell her so!”

  Darya Onisimovna was awfully alarmed.

  “Oh no,” she said, taking a step towards me, clasping her hands as though she were beseeching me. “Don’t be so hasty. There’s something very important the matter, very important to yourself, to them, too, to Andrey Petrovitch, to your mamma, to every one. . . . Go and see Anna Andreyevna at once, she can’t wait any longer . . . I assure you, on my honour . . . and afterwards you can make your decision.”

  I looked at her with surprise and repulsion.

  “Nonsense, it will be nothing, I’m not coming!” I shouted obstinately and vindictively: “Now everything’s different! Though how could you understand that? Good-bye, Darya Onisimovna, I won’t go on purpose, I won’t question you on purpose. You simply bother me. I don’t want to know anything about your mysteries.”

  As she did not go away, however, but still stood waiting, I snatched up my fur coat and cap, and went out myself, leaving her in the middle of the room. There were no letters or papers in my room, and I never used to lock my door when I went out. But before I had reached the front door my landlord ran after me downstairs, without his hat, and not in full uniform.

  “Arkady Makarovitch! Arkady Makarovitch!”

  “What now?”

  “Have you no instructions to leave?”

  “No, nothing.”

  He looked at me with eyes like gimlets, in evident uneasiness:

  “About your room, for instance?”

  “What about my room? Why, I sent you the rent when it was due?”

  “Oh no, sir, I was not thinking of the money,” he said with a broad smile, his eyes still piercing into me like pins.

  “Why, what on earth’s the matter with you all?” I shouted at last, growing almost savage. “What do you want too?”

  He waited for a few seconds longer, still seeming to expect something from me.

  “Well, then, you will give instructions later . . . if you are not in the humour now,” he muttered, grinning more broadly than ever; “you go on and I’ll see to it.”

  He ran back upstairs. Of course all this might well make one reflect. I purpose
ly avoid omitting a single detail in all that petty tomfoolery, for every little detail helped to make up the final situation and had its place in it, a fact of which the reader will be convinced. But that they really did bother me was true. If I was upset and irritated, it was at hearing again in their words that tone of intrigue and mystery of which I was so sick, and which so brought back the past. But to continue.

  It turned out that Versilov was not at home, and it appeared that he really had gone out as soon as it was light. “To mother’s, of course”: I stuck obstinately to my idea. I did not question the nurse, rather a stupid peasant woman, and there was no one else in the lodging. I ran to mother’s and I must admit I was so anxious that I took a sledge half-way. HE HAD NOT BEEN AT MOTHER’S SINCE THE EVENING BEFORE. There was no one with mother except Tatyana Pavlovna and Liza. Liza began getting ready to go out as soon as I went in.

  They were all sitting upstairs, in my “coffin.” In the drawing room Makar Ivanovitch was laid out on the table, and an old man was reading the psalter over him in an even, monotonous voice. For the future I am not going to describe anything more that does not relate to the matter in hand. I will only say that the coffin, which they had already made, was standing in the middle of the room, and was not a plain one, though it was black; it was upholstered in velvet, and the pall was of an expensive sumptuousness that was not in keeping with the character of a monk, or with the convictions of the dead man; but such was the special desire of my mother and Tatyana Pavlovna, who arranged the matter together.

  I had not of course expected to find them cheerful; but the peculiar overwhelming distress mixed with uneasiness and anxiety, which I read in their eyes, struck me at once, and I instantly concluded that “sorrow for the dead was certainly not the only cause.” All this, I repeat, I remember perfectly.