Poor Folk Anthology

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  "My dear boy, spare us!" he cried, immensely delighted, which enraged me more than ever.

  I am ready to give way and be trivial only about trifles. I never give way in things that are really important. In trifles, in little matters of etiquette, you can do anything you like with me, and I curse this peculiarity in myself. From a sort of putrid good nature I've sometimes been ready to knuckle under to some fashionable snob, simply flattered by his affability, or I've let myself be drawn into argument with a fool, which is more unpardonable than anything. All this is due to lack of self- control, and to my having grown up in seclusion, but next day it would be the same thing again: that's why I was sometimes taken for a boy of sixteen. But instead of gaining self-control I prefer even now to bottle myself up more tightly than ever in my shell— "I may be clumsy—but good-bye!"—however misanthropic that may seem. I say that seriously and for good. But I don't write this with reference to the prince or even with reference to that conversation.

  "I'm not speaking for your entertainment," I almost shouted at him. "I am speaking from conviction."

  "But how do you mean that women have no manners and are unseemly in their dress? That's something new."

  "They have no manners. Go to the theatre, go for a walk. Every man knows the right side of the road, when they meet they step aside, he keeps to the right, I keep to the right. A woman, that is a lady—it's ladies I'm talking about—dashes straight at you as though she doesn't see you, as though you were absolutely bound to skip aside and make way for her. I'm prepared to make way for her as a weaker creature, but why has she the right, why is she so sure it's my duty—that's what's offensive. I always curse when I meet them. And after that they cry out that they're oppressed and demand equality; a fine sort of equality when she tramples me under foot and fills my mouth with sand."

  "With sand?"

  "Yes, because they're not decently dressed—it's only depraved people don't notice it. In the law-courts they close the doors when they're trying cases of indecency. Why do they allow it in the streets, where there are more people? They openly hang bustles on behind to look as though they had fine figures; openly! I can't help noticing; the young lad notices it too; and the child that's growing into a boy notices it too; it's abominable. Let old rakes admire them and run after them with their tongues hanging out, but there is such a thing as the purity of youth which must be protected. One can only despise them. They walk along the parade with trains half a yard long behind them, sweeping up the dust. It's a pleasant thing to walk behind them: you must run to get in front of them, or jump on one side, or they'll sweep pounds of dust into your mouth and nose. And what's more it's silk, and they'll drag it over the stones for a couple of miles simply because it's the fashion, when their husbands get five hundred roubles a year in the Senate: that's where bribes come in! I've always despised them. I've cursed them aloud and abused them."

  Though I describe this conversation somewhat humorously in the style that was characteristic of me at that time, my ideas are still the same.

  "And how do you come off?" the prince queried.

  "I curse them and turn away. They feel it, of course, but they don't show it, they prance along majestically without turning their heads. But I only came to actual abuse on one occasion with two females, both wearing tails on the parade; of course I didn't use bad language, but I said aloud that long tails were offensive."

  "Did you use that expression?"

  "Of course I did. To begin with, they trample upon the rules of social life, and secondly, they raise the dust, and the parade is meant for all. I walk there, other men walk, Fyodor, Ivan, it's the same for all. So that's what I said. And I dislike the way women walk altogether, when you look at their back view; I told them that too, but only hinted at it."

  "But, my dear boy, you might get into serious trouble; they might have hauled you off to the police station."

  "They couldn't do anything. They had nothing to complain of: a man walks beside them talking to himself. Every one has the right to express his convictions to the air. I spoke in the abstract without addressing them. They began wrangling with me of themselves; they began to abuse me, they used much worse language than I did; they called me milksop, said I ought to go without my dinner, called me a nihilist, and threatened to hand me over to the police; said that I'd attacked them because they were alone and weak women, but if there'd been a man with them I should soon sing another tune. I very coolly told them to leave off annoying me, and I would cross to the other side of the street. And to show them that I was not in the least afraid of their men, and was ready to accept their challenge, I would follow them to their house, walking twenty paces behind them, then I would stand before the house and wait for their men. And so I did."

  "You don't say so?"

  "Of course it was stupid, but I was roused. They dragged me over two miles in the heat, as far as the 'institutions,' they went into a wooden house of one storey—a very respectable-looking one I must admit—one could see in at the windows a great many flowers, two canaries, three pug-dogs and engravings in frames. I stood for half an hour in the street facing the house. They peeped out two or three times, then pulled down all the blinds. Finally an elderly government clerk came out of the little gate; judging from his appearance he had been asleep and had been waked up on purpose; he was not actually in a dressing-gown, but he was in a very domestic-looking attire. He stood at the gate, folded his hands behind him, and proceeded to stare at me—I at him. Then he looked away, then gazed at me again, and suddenly began smiling at me. I turned and walked away."

  "My dear boy, how Schilleresque! I've always wondered at you; with your rosy cheeks, your face blooming with health, and such an aversion, one may say, for women! How is it possible that woman does not make a certain impression on you at your age? Why, when I was a boy of eleven, mon cher, my tutor used to notice that I looked too attentively at the statues in the Summer Gardens."

  "You would like me to take up with some Josephine here, and come and tell you all about it! Rather not; I saw a woman completely naked when I was thirteen; I've had a feeling of disgust ever since."

  "Do you mean it? But, cher enfant, about a fresh, beautiful woman there's a scent of apples; there's nothing disgusting."

  "In the little boarding school I was at before I went to the grammar school, there was a boy called Lambert. He was always thrashing me, for he was three years older than I was, and I used to wait on him, and take off his boots. When he was going to be confirmed an abbé, called Rigaud, came to congratulate him on his first communion, and they dissolved in tears on each other's necks, and the abbé hugged him tightly to his bosom. I shed tears, too, and felt very envious. He left school when his father died, and for two years I saw nothing of him. Then I met him in the street. He said he would come and see me. By that time I was at the grammar school and living at Nikolay Semyonovitch's. He came in the morning, showed me five hundred roubles, and told me to go with him. Though he had thrashed me two years before, he had always wanted my company, not simply to take off his boots, but because he liked to tell me things. He told me that he had taken the money that day out of his mother's desk, to which he had made a false key, for legally all his father's money was his, and so much the worse for her if she wouldn't give it to him. He said that the Abbé Rigaud had been to lecture him the day before, that he'd come in, stood over him, begun whimpering, and described all sorts of horrors, lifting up his hands to heaven. "And I pulled out a knife and told him I'd cut his throat" (he pronounced it 'thr-r-roat'). We went to Kuznetsky Street. On the way he informed me that his mother was the abbé's mistress, and that he'd found it out, and he didn't care a hang for anything, and that all they said about the sacrament was rubbish. He said a great deal more, and I felt frightened. In Kuznetsky Street he bought a double-barrelled gun, a game bag, cartridges, a riding-whip, and afterwards a pound of sweets. We were going out into the country to shoot, and on the way we met a bird-catcher with cages of birds. La
mbert bought a canary from him. In a wood he let the canary go, as it couldn't fly far after being in the cage, and began shooting at it, but did not hit it. It was the first time in his life he had fired off a gun, but he had wanted to buy a gun years before; at Touchard's even we were dreaming of one. He was almost choking with excitement. His hair was black, awfully black, his face was white and red, like a mask, he had a long aquiline nose, such as are common with Frenchmen, white teeth and black eyes. He tied the canary by a thread to a branch, and an inch away fired off both barrels, and the bird was blown into a hundred feathers. Then we returned, drove to an hotel, took a room, and began eating, and drinking champagne; a lady came in… . I remember being awfully impressed by her being so splendidly dressed; she wore a green silk dress. It was then I saw … all that I told you about… . Afterwards, when we had begun drinking, he began taunting and abusing her; she was sitting with nothing on, he took away her clothes and when she began scolding and asking for her clothes to dress again, he began with all his might beating her with the riding-whip on her bare shoulders. I got up, seized him by the hair, and so neatly that I threw him on the ground at once. He snatched up a fork and stuck it in my leg. Hearing the outcry, people ran in, and I had time to run away. Ever since then it's disgusted me to think of nakedness; and, believe me, she was a beauty."

  As I talked, the prince's face changed from a playful expression to one of great sadness.

  "Mon pauvre enfant! I have felt convinced all along that there have been very many unhappy days in your childhood."

  "Please don't distress yourself!"

  "But you were alone, you told me so yourself, but for that Lambert; you have described it so well, that canary, the confirmation and shedding tears on the abbé's breast, and only a year or so later saying that of his mother and the abbé! … Oh, mon cher, the question of childhood in our day is truly awful; for a time those golden heads, curly and innocent, flutter before one and look at one with their clear eyes like angels of God, or little birds, and afterwards … and afterwards it turns out that it would have been better if they had not grown up at all!"

  "How soft you are, prince! It's as though you had little children of your own. Why, you haven't any and never will have."

  "Tiens!" His whole face was instantly transformed, "that's just what Alexandra Petrovna said—the day before yesterday, he-he!— Alexandra Petrovna Sinitsky—you must have met her here three weeks ago—only fancy, the day before yesterday, in reply to my jocular remark that if I do get married now I could set my mind at rest, there'd be no children, she suddenly said, and with such spite, 'On the contrary, there certainly would be; people like you always have them, they'll arrive the very first year, you'll see.' He-he! And they've all taken it into their heads, for some reason, that I'm going to get married; but though it was spiteful I admit it was— witty!"

  "Witty—but insulting!"

  "Oh, cher enfant, one can't take offence at some people. There's nothing I prize so much in people as wit, which is evidently disappearing among us; though what Alexandra Petrovna said—can hardly be considered wit."

  "What? What did you say?" I said, catching at his words—"one can't take offence at some people. That's just it! Some people are not worth noticing—an excellent principle! Just the one I need. I shall make a note of it. You sometimes say the most delightful things, prince."

  He beamed all over.

  "N'est ce pas? Cher enfant, true wit is vanishing; the longer one lives the more one sees it. Eh, mais … c'est moi qui connait les femmes! Believe me, the life of every woman, whatever she may profess, is nothing but a perpetual search for some one to submit to … so to speak a thirst for submission. And mark my words, there's not a single exception."

  "Perfectly true! Magnificent!" I cried rapturously. Another time we should have launched into philosophical disquisitions on this theme, lasting for an hour, but suddenly I felt as though something had bitten me, and I flushed all over. I suddenly imagined that in admiring his bon mots I was flattering him as a prelude to asking for money, and that he would certainly think so as soon as I began to ask for it. I purposely mention this now.

  "Prince, I humbly beg you to pay me at once the fifty roubles you owe me for the month," I fired off like a shot, in a tone of irritability that was positively rude.

  I remember (for I remember every detail of that morning) that there followed between us then a scene most disgusting in its realistic truth. For the first minute he did not understand me, stared at me for some time without understanding what money I was talking about. It was natural that he should not realize I was receiving a salary— and indeed, why should I? It is true that he proceeded to assure me afterwards that he had forgotten, and when he grasped the meaning of my words, he instantly began taking out fifty roubles, but he was flustered and turned crimson. Seeing how things stood, I got up and abruptly announced that I could not take the money now, that in what I had been told about a salary they had made a mistake, or deceived me to induce me to accept the situation, and that I saw only too well now, that I did nothing to earn one, for I had no duties to perform. The prince was alarmed and began assuring me that I was of the greatest use to him, that I should be still more useful to him in the future, and that fifty roubles was so little that he should certainly add to it, for he was bound to do so, and that he had made the arrangement himself with Tatyana Pavlovna, but had "unpardonably forgotten it." I flushed crimson and declared resolutely that it was degrading for me to receive a salary for telling scandalous stories of how I had followed two draggle-tails to the 'institutions,' that I had not been engaged to amuse him but to do work, and that if there was no work I must stop it, and so on, and so on. I could never have imagined that anyone could have been so scared as he was by my words. Of course it ended in my ceasing to protest, and his somehow pressing the fifty roubles into my hand: to this day I recall with a blush that I took it. Everything in the world always ends in meanness, and what was worst of all, he somehow succeeded in almost proving to me that I had unmistakably earned the money, and I was so stupid as to believe it, and so it was absolutely impossible to avoid taking it.

  "Cher, cher enfant!" he cried, kissing and embracing me (I must admit I was on the point of tears myself, goodness knows why, though I instantly restrained myself, and even now I blush as I write it). "My dear boy, you're like one of the family to me now; in the course of this month you've won a warm place in my heart! In 'society' you get 'society' and nothing else. Katerina Nikolaevna (that was his daughter's name) is a magnificent woman and I'm proud of her, but she often, my dear boy, very often, wounds me. And as for these girls (elles sont charmantes) and their mothers who come on my birthday, they merely bring their embroidery and never know how to tell one anything. I've accumulated over sixty cushions embroidered by them, all dogs and stags. I like them very much, but with you I feel as if you were my own—not son, but brother, and I particularly like it when you argue against me; you're literary, you have read, you can be enthusiastic… ."

  "I have read nothing, and I'm not literary at all. I used to read what I came across, but I've read nothing for two years and I'm not going to read."

  "Why aren't you going to?"

  "I have other objects."

  "Cher … it's a pity if at the end of your life you say, like me, 'Je sais tout, mais je ne sais rien de bon.' I don't know in the least what I have lived in this world for! But … I'm so much indebted to you … and I should like, in fact … "

  He suddenly broke off, and with an air of fatigue sank into brooding. After any agitation (and he might be overcome by agitation at any minute, goodness knows why) he generally seemed for some time to lose his faculties and his power of self-control, but he soon recovered, so that it really did not matter. We sat still for a few minutes. His very full lower lip hung down … what surprised me most of all was that he had suddenly spoken of his daughter, and with such openness too. I put it down, of course, to his being upset.

  "Cher enfant, yo
u don't mind my addressing you so familiarly, do you?" broke from him suddenly.

  "Not in the least. I must confess that at the very first I was rather offended by it and felt inclined to address you in the same way, but I saw it was stupid because you didn't speak like that to humiliate me."

  But he had forgotten his question and was no longer listening.

  "Well, how's your FATHER?" he said, suddenly raising his eyes and looking dreamily at me.

  I winced. In the first place he called Versilov my FATHER, which he had never permitted himself to do before, and secondly, he began of himself to speak of Versilov, which he had never done before.

  "He sits at home without a penny and is very gloomy," I answered briefly, though I was burning with curiosity.

  "Yes, about money. His lawsuit is being decided to-day, and I'm expecting Prince Sergay as soon as he arrives. He promised to come straight from the court to me. Their whole future turns on it. It's a question of sixty or seventy thousand. Of course, I've always wished well to Andrey Petrovitch" (Versilov's name), "and I believe he'll win the suit, and Prince Sergay has no case. It's a point of law."

  "The case will be decided to-day?" I cried, amazed. The thought that Versilov had not deigned to tell me even that was a great shook to me. "Then he hasn't told my mother, perhaps not anyone," it suddenly struck me. "What strength of will!"

  "Then is Prince Sokolsky in Petersburg?" was another idea that occurred to me immediately.

  "He arrived yesterday. He has come straight from Berlin expressly for this day."

  That too was an extremely important piece of news for me. And he would be here to-day, that man who had given HIM a slap in the face!

  "Well, what then?" The old prince's face suddenly changed again. "He'll preach religion as before and … and … maybe run after little girls, unfledged girls, again. He-he! There's a very funny little story about that going about even now… . He-he!"

  "Who will preach? Who will run after little girls?"