‘I hear you, Klinevich, and I’m very glad, and believe me …’
‘I don’t believe you for a minute and don’t give a damn! I simply want to kiss you, you dear old thing, and thank God I can’t. Do you know, gentlemen, the trick that this grand-père19 came up with? He died two or three days ago and, can you imagine, he left behind a shortfall of a total of 400,000 of public money. Funds for widows and orphans, and for some reason he was the only one in charge, so that at the end he hadn’t been audited for some eight years. I can just see the long faces they’re all wearing now and how they’re remembering him! A delightful thought, don’t you agree? I’d been marvelling for a whole year now how this seventy-year-old geezer, who suffered from gout and rheumatism, managed to conserve so much energy for debauchery, and – and now we have the answer! It was the widows and orphans – the thought of them alone must have fired him up! … I had known about it for a long time, and I was the only one to know, Charpentier told me, and as soon as I found out, I immediately hit him up in a friendly way during Holy Week: “Give me 25,000, or there’ll be an audit tomorrow”; and just imagine, he could only come up with 13,000, so it seems that his dying now was very expedient. Grand-père, grand-père, do you hear me?’
‘Chèr20 Klinevich, I quite agree with you, and there is no need for you … to go into such details. Life has so much suffering and torments and so little reward … In the end I wished finally to have some peace and, so far as I see, I hope to glean all I can from here as well …’
‘I’ll wager that he’s already sniffed out Katish Berestova!’
‘Who? … Which Katish is that?’ the old man’s voice began to tremble with lust.
‘Ah-ah, which Katish? The one right here, to the left, five paces from me, ten from you. It’s already her fifth day here, and if you knew, grand-père, what a little rascal she is … from a good family, well brought up and – a monster, an utter monster! I didn’t show her to anybody there, I was the only one who knew … Katish, answer me!’
‘He-he-he!’ answered in reply the cracked sound of a girl’s voice, in which, however, one could hear something like the jab of a needle. ‘He-he-he!’
‘A little blonde girl?’ Grand-père babbled haltingly, drawing out the three words.
‘He-he-he!’
‘I … I have long,’ babbled the old man, panting, ‘dreamed of a little blonde girl … about fifteen years old … and precisely in circumstances like these …’
‘Ugh, you monster!’ Avdotya Ignatyevna exclaimed.
‘Enough!’ Klinevich had made up his mind, ‘I see that there’s excellent material. We’ll quickly arrange things for the better here. The main thing is to spend the remaining time enjoyably; but how much time? Hey, you, the government official, did I hear that your name was Lebezyatnikov?’
‘Lebezyatnikov, court councillor, Semyon Yevseyich, at your service, and I’m very, very, very glad to make your acquaintance.’
‘I don’t give a damn whether you’re pleased; it’s just that it seems you know everything here. Tell me, first of all (I’ve been wondering about this since yesterday), how is it that we can talk here? After all, we’re dead, and yet we can talk; and it seems that we can move as well, and yet we don’t talk and we don’t move. What’s the secret?’
‘If you wish, Baron, Platon Nikolayevich could explain this to you better than I.’
‘Who’s Platon Nikolayevich? Don’t shilly-shally, get to the point.’
‘Platon Nikolayevich is our local, homespun philosopher, scientist and master of arts. He’s put out several little books on philosophy, but for the past three months now he keeps falling sound asleep, so much so that it’s impossible to stir him. Once a week he mutters a few words beside the point.’
‘Get to the point, get to the point! …’
‘He explains it all by the simplest fact, namely, that up above, when we were still alive, we mistakenly deemed death there was death. The body comes to life here again, as it were, the residue of life is concentrated, but only in the consciousness. I don’t know how to say it – it’s as if life continues by inertia. Everything is concentrated, in his opinion, somewhere in the consciousness and continues for another two or three months … sometimes even half a year … There’s one fellow here, for example, who has almost completely decomposed, but once every six weeks he’ll still suddenly mutter a word, meaningless, of course, about some bobok: “Bobok, bobok.” But that means that an inconspicuous spark of life still glimmers inside him as well …’
‘Rather stupid. But then how is it that I smell a stench if I don’t have a sense of smell?’
‘That’s … he-he … Well, that’s where our philosopher gets a bit hazy. It was precisely in regard to the sense of smell that he observed that the stench that is smelled, so to speak, is a moral stench! He-he! The stench coming from our soul, as it were, so that in these two or three months one has time to look back … and that this is, so to speak, the final mercy … Only it seems to me, Baron, that this is all mystical gibberish, which is quite excusable given his circumstances …’
‘Enough, and the rest of it, I’m sure, is all nonsense. The main thing is that there’s two or three months of life and in the end – bobok. I propose that we all spend these two months as pleasantly as possible and to that end we should all arrange things on a different footing. Ladies and gentlemen! I propose that we not be ashamed of anything!’
‘Ah, yes, let’s, let’s not be ashamed of anything!’ many voices were heard to say, and, strangely enough, even altogether new voices were heard, which means that meanwhile some others had only just awakened. The bass voice of an engineer, now fully awake, thundered his assent with particular readiness. The girl Katish giggled with delight.
‘Ah, how I want not to be ashamed of anything!’ Avdotya Ignatyevna exclaimed with rapture.
‘Listen, now if even Avdotya Ignatyevna wants not to be ashamed of anything …’
‘No-no-no, Klinevich, I was ashamed, all the same I was ashamed there, but here I so terribly, terribly wish not to be ashamed of anything!’
‘I understand, Klinevich,’ the engineer bellowed, ‘that you’re proposing to arrange life here, so to speak, on a new and rational footing.’
‘Well, I don’t give a damn about that! As far as that’s concerned, let’s wait for Kuderyarov, who was brought here yesterday. He’ll wake up and explain everything to you. He’s such a figure, such a gigantic figure! Tomorrow, I believe, they’re bringing another scientist and probably another officer, and, if I’m not mistaken in three or four days a certain feuilletonist and, I believe, his editor as well. However, to hell with them, we’ll have our own little group and everything will fall into place on its own. But meanwhile I don’t want there to be any lying. That’s all I want, because that’s the main thing. On earth it’s impossible to live and not to lie, for life and lying are synonymous; well, but here for the fun of it we won’t lie. The devil take it, the grave does mean something after all! We’ll all tell our stories out loud and we won’t be ashamed of anything now. I’ll tell about myself first. I’m a voluptuary, you know. Up there all this was bound together with rotten ropes. Down with ropes, and let’s live these two months in the most shameless truth! Let’s strip ourselves bare and be naked!’
‘Let’s be naked, naked!’ the voices all cried out.
‘I so terribly, terribly want to be naked!’ Avdotya Ignatyevna squealed.
‘Ah … ah … Ah, I see that we’re going to have a good time here; I don’t want to go see Ecke!’
‘No, I would have lived a bit longer, you know, I would have lived a bit longer!’
‘He-he-he!’ Katish giggled.
‘The main thing is that nobody can stand in our way, and even though Pervoyedov, I see, is angry, all the same he can’t touch me. Grand-père, do you agree?’
‘I absolutely, absolutely agree and with the greatest pleasure, provided only that Katish begins with her biography first.’
&
nbsp; ‘I protest, I protest with all my might,’ General Pervoyedov pronounced firmly.
‘Your Excellency!’ the scoundrel Lebezyatnikov prattled and urged in hurried excitement, with his voice lowered, ‘Your Excellency, it will be to our advantage to agree. You see, there’s this girl … and, finally, all these various little things …’
‘To be sure, there’s the girl, but …’
‘To our advantage, Your Excellency, it would really and truly be to our advantage! Well, if only as an experiment, well, let’s at least give it a try …’
‘Even in the grave they won’t let me rest in peace!’
‘First of all, General, you’re playing preference in the grave, and secondly, we don’t give a damn about you,’ Klinevich declaimed, emphasizing each word.
‘My dear sir, I beg you all the same not to forget yourself.’
‘What? But you can’t touch me, while 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 he was a general, but here he’s a mere nothing!’
‘No, not a mere nothing … Here, too, I’m a …’
‘Here you’ll rot in your coffin, and the only thing left of you will be your six brass buttons.’
‘Bravo, Klinevich, ha-ha-ha!’ the voices roared.
‘I served my sovereign … I have a sword …’
‘The only thing your sword’s good for is spearing mice; besides, you never drew it.’
‘All the same, sir; I comprised a part of the whole.’
‘There are all sorts of parts in the whole.’
‘Bravo, Klinevich, bravo, ha-ha-ha!’
‘I don’t understand what exactly a sword is,’ the engineer exclaimed.
‘We’ll run from the Prussians like mice, they’ll tear us to pieces,’ cried a distant and unfamiliar voice, but one literally transported with delight.
‘A sword, sir, is honour!’ the general cried, but only I heard him. A prolonged and frenzied roar, melee and clamour broke out, and only Avdotya Ignatyevna’s impatient squeals, which bordered on the hysterical, could be heard.
‘But quickly, quickly! Ah, when are we going to start being ashamed of nothing!’
‘Oh-ho-ho! Truly, my soul is passing through the torments!’ resounded the voice of the man of the common people, and …
And that’s when I suddenly sneezed. It happened without warning and unintentionally, but the effect was startling: everything fell as silent as the grave, and it all vanished like a dream. A truly sepulchral silence ensued. I don’t think that they had become ashamed on my account: after all, they’d resolved not to be ashamed of anything! I waited for about five minutes and – not a word, not a sound. Nor can one suppose that they feared that I would inform on them to the police; for what could the police do here? I can only conclude that they must after all have some secret, unknown to us mortals, which they carefully conceal from every mortal.
‘Well, my dears,’ I thought, ‘I’ll come visit you again’, and with that I left the cemetery.
No, this I will not tolerate; no, indeed, no! It’s not bobok that troubles me (so that’s what this bobok turned out to be!).
Depravity in such a place, the depravity of the final hopes, the depravity of flabby and rotting corpses and – not sparing even the final moments of consciousness! They were granted, they were made a present of these moments and … But most of all, most of all – in such a place! No, this I will not tolerate …
I’ll spend some time in other classes of graves here, I’ll listen everywhere. That’s just what needs to be done, to listen everywhere and not just in one part, in order to come to an understanding. Perhaps I’ll stumble on to something comforting.
But I’ll definitely go back to them. They promised their biographies and various stories. Ugh! But I’ll go, I’ll definitely go; it’s a matter of conscience!
I’ll take it to the Citizen;21 a portrait of one of the editors there was also put in the exhibit. Perhaps he’ll publish it.
1873
THE MEEK ONE
A Fantastic Story
From the Author
I beg my readers’ pardon that this time instead of the Diary in its usual form I’m only giving you a story. But this story has really kept me busy for the better part of a month. In any case, I beg the readers’ indulgence.
Now about the story itself. I have subtitled it ‘fantastic’, when in fact I believe it to be realistic in the highest degree. But there is indeed something fantastic about it, namely, the very form the story takes, which I find necessary to comment on beforehand.
The fact of the matter is that this is neither a story nor just notes. Picture to yourself a husband, whose wife is lying on a table,1 a suicide, who a few hours earlier had hurled herself out the window. He is confused and still has not managed to collect his thoughts. He paces about his rooms and tries to comprehend what has happened, to collect his thoughts ‘to a T’. Moreover, he is an inveterate hypochondriac, one of those who talks to himself. So here he is talking to himself, recapitulating what has happened, trying to make sense of it. Despite the apparent coherence of his speech, he contradicts himself several times, both in his logic and his feelings. He justifies himself and blames her, and launches into irrelevant explanations: there is a vulgarity of mind and heart here, there is also deep feeling. Little by little, he indeed does make sense of it all and collects his thoughts ‘to a T’. A series of memories that he calls forth inexorably leads him in the end to the truth; the truth inexorably ennobles his mind and heart. Towards the end even the tone of the story changes in comparison with the chaotic beginning. The truth is revealed to the unfortunate man rather clearly and definitely, at least as far as he is concerned.
That is the subject. Of course, the process of the telling of the story takes several hours, by fits and starts, and the form is inconsistent: now he talks to himself, now he addresses, as it were, an unseen listener, some sort of judge. But that is how it always is in real life. If a stenographer could eavesdrop on him and record everything, it would come out somewhat rougher, less polished than I have presented it, but, so it seems to me, the psychological sequence would perhaps remain the same. Now this presumption of a stenographer who records everything (after which I would polish what had been recorded) is what I would call the fantastic in this story. But something very similar has been allowed in art more than once: Victor Hugo, for example, in his masterpiece The Last Day of a Condemned Man2 employed virtually the very same stratagem, and although he did not depict a stenographer, he admitted an even greater improbability by presuming that a condemned man is able (and has the time) to keep a diary not only on his last day, but even during his final hour and literally, his last minute. But if he had not permitted this fantasy, the work itself would not exist – the most realistic and most truthful work of all he wrote.
CHAPTER 1
I. Who I Was and Who She Was
… Now as long as she’s here – everything is still all right: I’m constantly going over and looking at her; but tomorrow they’ll take her away and – how will I ever stay behind all on my own? Now she’s on the table in the sitting room, on two card tables that were put together, and the coffin will come tomorrow, a white one, with white gros de Naples,3 however, that’s not it … I keep pacing and want to make sense of it for myself. Now it’s six hours that I’ve been trying to make sense of it and I still can’t collect my thoughts to a T. The fact of the matter is that I keep pacing, pacing, pacing … Here’s how it was. I’ll simply tell it in order. (Order!) Gentlemen, I’m far from being a literary man, as you’ll see, well, so be it, but I’ll tell it as I myself understand it. That’s the horror of it for me, that I understand everything!
If you want to know, that is, if we take it from the very beginning, then quite simply she used to come to me to pawn things in order to pay for advertising in the Voice,4 saying, well, that there’s a governess, willing to travel and give lessons in the home and so forth
and so on. That was in the very beginning and of course I didn’t single her out from the others: she came like all the others and so forth. But afterwards I began to single her out. She was so thin, fair, a bit taller than average; with me she was always awkward, as if she were embarrassed (I think that she was exactly the same with all strangers, and, it goes without saying, I was no different than anyone else, that is, if taken not as a pawnbroker but as a man). As soon as she received her money she would immediately turn around and leave. And all in silence. Others argue, beg, haggle to be given more; but not this one, whatever she was given … It seems to me that I keep getting muddled … Yes; first of all, I was struck by her things: silver gilt earrings, a worthless little locket – things worth twenty kopecks. She herself knew that they were worth all of ten kopecks, but I could see from her face that for her they were objects of great value – and indeed, as I learned later, this was all that she had left from her papa and mama. Only once did I permit myself to smile at her things. That is, you see, I never permit myself that, I maintain a gentlemanly tone with the public: a few words said respectfully and sternly. ‘Sternly, sternly and sternly.’5 But she suddenly permitted herself to bring the remnants (quite literally, that is) of an old rabbit-skin jacket – and I couldn’t resist and suddenly said something to her in the way of a witticism, as it were. Goodness gracious, how she flared up! Her eyes were blue, large, thoughtful, but how they blazed! But she didn’t let drop a single word, she picked up her ‘remnants’ and left. That was the first time that I noticed her particularly and thought something of that sort about her, that is, precisely something of that particular sort. Yes; I recall yet another impression, that is, if you wish, the main impression, the synthesis of everything: namely, that she was terribly young, so young, as if she were fourteen years old. Whereas she was then three months shy of sixteen. However, that wasn’t what I wanted to say, that wasn’t the synthesis at all. She came again the next day. I later learned that she had been to Dobronravov and Mozer with that jacket, but they don’t take anything except gold and didn’t even bother to talk to her. I, on the other hand, had once taken a cameo from her (a worthless little thing) – and when I gave it some thought later on I was surprised: I also don’t buy anything except gold and silver and yet I had taken a cameo. That was my second thought about her then, I remember that.
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 37
