“Cher Klinevich, I quite agree with you, and you needn’t… go into such detail. There’s so much suffering and torment in life, and so little reward… I wished finally to have some peace, and, as far as I can see, I hope even here to extract all…”
“I’ll bet he’s already sniffed out about Katie Berestov!”
“What?… What Katie?” the old man’s voice trembled carnivorously.
“Aha, what Katie? Here, to the left, five steps from me, ten from you. It’s the fifth day she’s been here, and if you knew, grand-père, what a little hellcat she is… from a good family, educated, and—a monster, a monster to the last degree! I never showed her to anybody there, I alone knew… Katie, answer me!”
“Hee, hee, hee!” answered the cracked sound of a girl’s voice, but one could hear something like the prick of a needle in it. “Hee, hee, hee!”
“Is… she… blond?” the grand-père babbled, faltering, in three gasps.
“Hee, hee, hee!”
“I… I’ve long dreamed,” the old man babbled breathlessly, “a lovely dream about a little blonde… fifteen or so… and precisely in such a situation…”
“Ah, abominable!” Avdotya Ignatievna exclaimed.
“Enough!” Klinevich decided. “I see the material is excellent. We’ll immediately set things up here in the best possible way. Above all so as to spend the rest of our time merrily; but what sort of time? Hey, you, the official or whatever, Lebezyatnikov, I’ve heard they call you that!”
“Lebezyatnikov, court councillor, Semyon Evseych, at your service, and very, very, very gladly.”
“Spit on your gladly, only you seem to know everything here. Tell me, first of all (I’ve been wondering since yesterday), how is it that we can speak here? We’re dead and yet we can speak; we also move, as it were, and yet we don’t speak or move? What’s the trick?”
“If you wish, Baron, this can better be explained to you by Platon Nikolaevich.”
“What Platon Nikolaevich? Don’t mumble, get to the point.”
“Platon Nikolaevich, our local homegrown philosopher, natural scientist, and magister. He put out several books on philosophy, but it’s three months now and he’s falling quite asleep, so it’s no longer possible to shake him out of it. Once a week he mutters a few words that are quite beside the point.”
“To the point, to the point!…”
“He explains it all with the most simple fact—namely, that up there, while we were still alive, we mistakenly regarded death there as death. Here the body revives again, as it were, the remnants of life concentrate, but only in the consciousness. It’s—I don’t know how to put it—life continuing as if by inertia. Everything is concentrated, in his opinion, somewhere in the consciousness, and goes on for another two or three months… sometimes even half a year… There’s one here, for instance, who is almost entirely decomposed, but once in six weeks, say, he suddenly mutters some little word, a meaningless one, of course, about some bobok: ‘Bobok, bobok’—which means that in him, too, an imperceptible spark of life is still glimmering…”
“Rather stupid. Well, and how is it that I have no sense of smell, but can feel the stench?”
“That’s… heh, heh… Well, here our philosopher got himself into a fog. He observed precisely about smelling that here the stench one can feel is, so to speak, a moral one—heh, heh! A stench as if of the soul, so that one has time in these two or three months to reconsider… and that it is, so to speak, the last mercy… Only it seems to me, Baron, that this is all mystical raving, quite excusable in his position…”
“Enough, and the rest, I’m sure, is all nonsense. The main thing is two or three months of life, and in the final end—bobok. I suggest that we all spend these two months as pleasurably as possible, and for that we should all set things up on a different basis. Gentlemen! I propose that we not be ashamed of anything!”
“Ah, let’s not be, let’s not be ashamed of anything!” many voices were heard, and strangely, even quite new voices, meaning that in the interim new ones had awakened. With especial readiness, the now completely recovered engineer thundered his consent in a bass voice. The girl Katie giggled joyfully.
“Ah, how I want not to be ashamed of anything!” Avdotya Ignatievna exclaimed with rapture.
“Do you hear, if even Avdotya Ignatievna wants not to be ashamed of anything…”
“No, no, no, Klinevich, I was ashamed, I was ashamed there even so, but here I want terribly, terribly not to be ashamed of anything!”
“I gather, Klinevich,” the engineer bassed, “that you suggest setting up the—so to speak—life here on new and now reasonable principles.”
“Well, that I spit on! Regarding that, let’s wait for Kudeyarov, who was brought yesterday. He’ll wake up and explain everything to you. He’s such a person, such a gigantic person! Tomorrow I expect they’ll drag yet another natural scientist here, another officer probably, and, in three or four days, if I’m not mistaken, some feuilletonist and, I think, his editor along with him. Anyhow, to hell with them, it’s just that we’ll have our little crew assembled here and it will all get set up by itself. But meanwhile I want there to be no lying. That’s the only thing I want, because it’s the main thing. It’s impossible to live on earth and not lie, for life and lie are synonymous; but here, just for the fun of it, we won’t lie. Devil take it, the grave does mean something after all! We’ll all tell our stories aloud and not be ashamed of anything now. I’ll tell about myself first of all. I’m one of the carnivorous ones, you know. Up there it was all tied with rotten ropes. Away with the ropes, and let’s live for these two months in the most shameless truth! Let’s strip and get naked!”
“Get naked, get naked!” voices shouted all around.
“I want terribly, terribly to get naked!” Avdotya Ignatievna squealed.
“Ah… ah… ah, I see it’s going to be fun here; I don’t want to go to Ecke!”
“No, I could live a little, no, you know, I could live a little!”
“Hee, hee, hee!” Katie giggled.
“The main thing is that no one can forbid us, and though I can see that Pervoedov is angry, he still can’t reach me with his hand. Grand-père, do you agree?”
“I fully, fully agree, and with the greatest pleasure, provided Katie is the first to start her bi-og-raphy.”
“I protest! I protest with all my strength,” General Pervoedov stated firmly.
“Your Excellency!” the blackguard Lebezyatnikov, in hasty agitation and with lowered voice, babbled and persuaded, “Your Excellency, it’s even more profitable for us if we agree. There’s this girl here, you know… and, finally, all these different antics…”
“Granted there’s the girl, but…”
“It’s more profitable, Your Excellency, by God it’s more profitable for you! Well, at least as a little sample, at least for a try…”
“Even in the grave they won’t let me rest!”
“First of all, General, you play cards in the grave, and, second of all, we spit on you,” Klinevich scanned out.
“My dear sir, I beg you all the same not to forget yourself.”
“What? You can’t reach me, and I can tease you from here like Yulka’s lapdog. And first of all, gentlemen, what sort of general is he here? It’s there that he was a general, but here—pfft!”
“No, not pfft… here, too, I’m…”
“Here you’ll rot in your coffin and there’ll be only six brass buttons left!”
“Bravo, Klinevich, ha, ha, ha!” voices bellowed.
“I served my sovereign… I wear a sword…”
“Your sword’s good for skewering mice, and besides you never drew it.”
“It’s all the same, sir; I constituted part of the whole.”
“We know these parts of the whole.”
“Bravo, Klinevich, bravo, ha, ha, ha!”
“I don’t understand what a sword is,” the engineer declared.
“We’ll run like mic
e from the Prussians,16 they’ll make mincemeat of us!” a voice farther away and unknown to me cried out, literally spluttering with rapture.
“A sword, sir, is honor,” came the general’s cry, but that was the last I heard of him. A long and furious bellowing, uproar, and racket arose, and only Avdotya Ignatievna’s squeals, impatient to the point of hysterics, could be made out.
“Quicker, be quicker! Ah, when are we going to start not being ashamed of anything!”
“Oh, woe, woe! Truly my soul is visiting the torments!” came the voice of the simple man, and …
And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened unexpectedly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: all became still, just like a cemetery, vanished like a dream. A true graveyard silence fell. I don’t think they were ashamed before me: they had decided not to be ashamed of anything! I waited for about five minutes but—not a word, not a sound. It was also impossible to suppose that they feared a denunciation to the police; for what could the police do here? I’m forced to conclude that they must after all have some secret unknown to mortals, and which they carefully conceal from every mortal.
“Well, my dears,” I thought, “I’ll be visiting you again,” and with those words I left the cemetery.
No, this I cannot allow; no, I truly cannot! It’s not bobok that bothers me (so here’s that bobok!).
Depravity in such a place, the depravity of last hopes, the depravity of flabby and rotting corpses and—not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! They’re given, they’re made a gift of these moments and… And, above all, above all in such a place! No, this I cannot allow…
I’ll visit other classes, I’ll listen everywhere. The point is that I must listen everywhere, and not just at one end, to form an idea. Perhaps I’ll bump into something com forting.
And I’ll certainly go back to those ones. They promised their biographies and various little anecdotes. Pah! But I’ll go, I’ll certainly go; it’s a matter of conscience!
I’ll take it to The Citizen;17 they also exhibited the portrait of some editor. Maybe they’ll print it.
THE MEEK ONE
A FANTASTIC STORY
From the Author
I BEG MY readers’ pardon for giving them this time, instead of the Diary in its usual form, simply a long story. But I have in fact been occupied with this story for the better part of the month. In any case, I beg the readers’ indulgence.
Now about the story itself. I have termed it “fantastic,” though I myself consider it realistic in the highest degree. But there is indeed a fantastic side to it, and namely in the very form of the story, which I find it necessary to clarify beforehand.
The thing is that this is not a story and not notes. Imagine to yourself a husband whose wife is lying on the table,1 a suicide, who a few hours earlier threw herself out the window. He is in bewilderment and has not yet had time to collect his thoughts. He paces his rooms and tries to make sense of what has happened, “to collect his thoughts to a point.” Besides, he is an inveterate hypochondriac, of the sort that talks to himself. Here he is, then, talking to himself, telling the matter over, figuring it out for himself. Despite the seeming consistency of his speech, he contradicts himself several times, both in logic and in feelings. He justifies himself, and accuses her, and launches into extraneous explanations: there is coarseness of thought and heart here; there is also deep feeling. Little by little he actually figures out the matter and collects his “thoughts to a point.” A series of memories he calls up brings him irresistibly to the truth; the truth irresistibly elevates his mind and heart. Toward the end even the tone of the story changes, as compared with its disorderly beginning. The truth is disclosed to the unfortunate man quite clearly and definitely, at least for himself.
That is the theme. Of course, the process of telling goes on for several hours, in bits and snatches, and in incoherent form: now he talks to himself, now it is as if he addresses an invisible listener, some judge. But so it always happens in reality. If a stenographer could eavesdrop and write it all down after him, it would come out a bit rougher, less polished than I have presented it, but, for all I can see, the psychological order would perhaps remain the same. Now, this supposition of a stenographer who could write it all down (after which I would polish what was written) is what I call fantastic in this story. But a somewhat similar thing has been allowed in art more than once: Victor Hugo, for instance, in his masterpiece The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death, employed almost the same method, and though he introduced no stenographer, he allowed for still greater implausibility, supposing that a man condemned to death is able (and has time) to write notes not only on his last day, but even in his last hour and literally his last minute. But had he not allowed this fantasy, the work itself would not exist—the most realistic and truthful of all he wrote.
CHAPTER ONE
I
WHO I WAS AND WHO SHE WAS
…SO LONG as she’s here—everything is still all right: I go over and look every moment; but tomorrow she’ll be taken away and—how am I to stay alone? She’s in the big room now, on a table, we put two card tables together, and the coffin will come tomorrow, a white one, white gros de Naples, but, anyhow, it’s not that… I keep pacing and want to figure it out for myself. It’s already six hours now that I’ve been wanting to figure it out and I simply can’t collect my thoughts to a point. The thing is that I keep pacing, pacing, pacing… Here is how it was. I’ll simply tell it in order (order!). Gentlemen, I’m far from being a writer, and you can see that, and let it be so, but I’ll tell it as I understand it. There’s my whole horror—that I understand everything!
This, if you want to know, that is, if we take it from the very beginning, quite simply that she used to come to me then to pawn things in order to pay for an advertisement in The Voice,2 saying here, thus and so, a governess, agrees to relocate, and give lessons at home, and so on and so forth. This was at the very beginning, and I, of course, didn’t distinguish her from the others: she comes like everybody else, well, and so forth. But later I began to distinguish. She was so slender, fair-haired, medium tall; with me she was always awkward, as if abashed (I think she was the same with all strangers, and, naturally, I was the same for her as any other, that is, taken not as a pawnbroker but as a human being). As soon as she got the money, she would turn and leave at once. And all silently. Others, they argue, beg, bargain in order to get more; this one no, just what’s given… It seems to me I keep getting confused… Yes; first of all I was struck by her things: gilt silver earrings, a trashy little locket—things worth two bits. She knew herself they were only a bit’s worth, yet I saw by her face that they were treasures for her—and in fact it was all she had left from her papa and mama, I found out later. Once only did I allow myself to smile at her things. That is, you see, I never allow myself that, I keep a gentlemanly tone with the public: a few words, polite and stern. “Stern, stern, stern.” But she suddenly allowed herself to bring the remnants (I mean, literally) of an old rabbitskin jacket—and I couldn’t help myself and suddenly said something to her, as if a witticism. Goodness, how she flushed! Her eyes are light blue, big, pensive, but—how they lit up! But she didn’t let out a word, she took her “remnants” and—left. It was then that I took particular notice of her for the first time and thought something of that sort about her, that is, precisely of that particular sort. Yes: I also remember the impression, that is, if you like, the main impression, the synthesis of everything: namely, that she was terribly young, so young, as if she were just fourteen years old. And yet she was three months short of sixteen then. But anyway that’s not what I wanted to say, the synthesis wasn’t in that at all. Next day she came again. I found out later that she had gone with the jacket to Dobronravov and to Moser, but they take nothing but gold and wouldn’t even speak to her. But I once took a cameo from her (a trashy one)—and, on reflection, was surprised afterward: I, too, take nothing but gold and silver, yet I accepted a cameo from he
r. That was my second thought about her then, I remember it.
This time, that is, after Moser, she brought an amber cigar holder—a so-so little thing, for an amateur, but once again worth nothing with us, because we take only gold. Since she came after the previous day’s rebellion, I met her sternly. Sternness with me is dryness. However, as I handed her the two roubles, I couldn’t help myself and said as if with a certain irritation: “I’m doing it only for you, Moser wouldn’t take such a thing from you.” I especially emphasized the words for you, and precisely in a certain sense. I was angry. She flushed again on hearing this for you, but held her peace, didn’t drop the money, took it—that’s poverty! But how she flushed! I realized that I’d stung her. And after she left, I suddenly asked myself: can it really be that this triumph over her cost two roubles? Heh, heh, heh! I remember twice asking precisely this question: “Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” And, laughing, I resolved it for myself in the affirmative. I got quite merry then. But this wasn’t a bad feeling: I had a design, an intention: I wanted to test her, because I suddenly had some thoughts fermenting in me concerning her. This was my third particular thought about her.
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 27
