Part 217

The dinner goes yet more wearily than in winter. The same Gnekker, whom I now hate and despise, dines with me every day. Before, I used to suffer his presence in silence, but now I say biting things to him, which make my wife and Liza blush. Carried away by an evil feeling, I often say things that are merely foolish, end don't know why I say them. Thus it happened once that after looking at Gnekker contemptuously for a long while, I suddenly fired off, for no reason at all:

"Eagles than barnyard-fowls may lower bend; But fowls shall never to the heav'ns ascend."

More's the pity that the fowl Gnekker shows himself more clever than the eagle professor. Knowing my wife and daughter are on his side he maintains these tactics. He replies to my shafts with a condescending silence ("The old man's off his head.... What's the good of talking to him?"), or makes good-humoured fun of me. It is amazing to what depths of pettiness a man may descend. During the whole dinner I can dream how Gnekker will be shown to be an adventurer, how Liza and my wife will realise their mistake, and I will tease them--ridiculous dreams like these at a time when I have one foot in the grave.

Now there occur misunderstandings, of a kind which I formerly knew only by hearsay. Though it is painful I will describe one which occurred after dinner the other day. I sit in my room smoking a little pipe. Enters my wife, as usual, sits down and begins to talk. What a good idea it would be to go to Kharkov now while the weather is warm and there is the time, and inquire what kind of man our Gnekker is.

"Very well. I'll go," I agree.

My wife gets up, pleased with me, and walks to the door; but immediately returns:

"By-the bye, I've one more favour to ask. I know you'll be angry; but it's my duty to warn you.... Forgive me, Nicolai,--but all our neighbours have begun to talk about the way you go to Katy's continually. I don't deny that she's clever and educated. It's pleasant to spend the time with her. But at your age and in your position it's rather strange to find pleasure in her society.... Besides she has a reputation enough to...."

All my blood rushes instantly from my brain. My eyes flash fire. I catch hold of my hair, and stamp and cry, in a voice that is not mine:

"Leave me alone, leave me, leave me...."

My face is probably terrible, and my voice strange, for my wife suddenly gets pale, and calls aloud, with a despairing voice, also not her own. At our cries rush in Liza and Gnekker, then Yegor.

My feet grow numb, as though they did not exist. I feel that I am falling into somebody's arms. Then I hear crying for a little while and sink into a faint which lasts for two or three hours.

Now for Katy. She comes to see me before evening every day, which of course must be noticed by my neighbours and my friends. After a minute she takes me with her for a drive. She has her own horse and a new buggy she bought this summer. Generally she lives like a princess. She has taken an expensive detached bungalow with a big garden, and put into it all her town furniture. She has two maids and a coachman. I often ask her:

"Katy, what will you live on when you've spent all your father's money?"

"We'll see, then," she answers.

"But this money deserves to be treated more seriously, my dear. It was earned by a good man and honest labour."

"You've told me that before. I know."

First we drive by the field, then by a young pine forest, which you can see from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as she used, although the devil whispers to me that all these pines and firs, the birds and white clouds in the sky will not notice my absence in three or four months when I am dead. Katy likes to take the reins, and it is good that the weather is fine and I am sitting by her side. She is in a happy mood, and does not say bitter things.

"You're a very good man, Nicolai," she says. "You are a rare bird. There's no actor who could play your part. Mine or Mikhail's, for instance--even a bad actor could manage, but yours--there's nobody. I envy you, envy you terribly I What am I? What?"

She thinks for a moment, and asks:

"I'm a negative phenomenon, aren't I?"

"Yes," I answer.

"H'm ... what's to be done then?"

What answer can I give? It's easy to say "Work," or "Give your property to the poor," or "Know yourself," and because it's so easy to say this I don't know what to answer.

My therapeutist colleagues, when teaching methods of cure, advise one "to individualise each particular case." This advice must be followed in order to convince one's self that the remedies recommended in the text- books as the best and most thoroughly suitable as a general rule, are quite unsuitable in particular cases. It applies to moral affections as well. But I must answer something. So I say:

"You've too much time on your hands, my dear. You must take up something.... In fact, why shouldn't you go on the stage again, if you have a vocation."

"I can't."

"You have the manner and tone of a victim. I don't like it, my dear. You have yourself to blame. Remember, you began by getting angry with people and things in general; but you never did anything to improve either of them. You didn't put up a struggle against the evil. You got tired. You're not a victim of the struggle but of your own weakness. Certainly you were young then and inexperienced. But now everything can be different. Come on, be an actress. You will work; you will serve in the temple of art."...

"Don't be so clever, Nicolai," she interrupts. "Let's agree once for all: let's speak about actors, actresses, writers, but let us leave art out of it. You're a rare and excellent man. But you don't understand enough about art to consider it truly sacred. You have no flair, no ear for art. You've been busy all your life, and you never had time to acquire the flair. Really ... I don't love these conversations about art!" she continues nervously. "I don't love them. They've vulgarised it enough already, thank you."

"Who's vulgarised it?"

"They vulgarised it by their drunkenness, newspapers by their over- familiarity, clever people by philosophy."

"What's philosophy got to do with it?"

"A great deal. If a man philosophises, it means he doesn't understand."

So that it should not come to bitter words, I hasten to change the subject, and then keep silence for a long while. It's not till we come out of the forest and drive towards Katy's bungalow, I return to the subject and ask:

"Still, you haven't answered me why you don't want to go on the stage?"

"Really, it's cruel," she cries out, and suddenly blushes all over. "You want me to tell you the truth outright. Very well if ... if you will have it I I've no talent! No talent and ... much ambition! There you are!"

After this confession, she turns her face away from me, and to hide the trembling of her hands, tugs at the reins.

As we approach her bungalow, from a distance we see Mikhail already, walking about by the gate, impatiently awaiting us.

"This Fiodorovich again," Katy says with annoyance. "Please take him away from me. I'm sick of him. He's flat.... Let him go to the deuce."

Mikhail Fiodorovich ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he has postponed his departure every week. There have been some changes in him lately. He's suddenly got thin, begun to be affected by drink--a thing that never happened to him before, and his black eyebrows have begun to get grey. When our buggy stops at the gate he cannot hide his joy and impatience. Anxiously he helps Katy and me from the buggy, hastily asks us questions, laughs, slowly rubs his hands, and that gentle, prayerful, pure something that I used to notice only in his eyes is now poured over all his face. He is happy and at the same time ashamed of his happiness, ashamed of his habit of coming to Katy's every evening, and he finds it necessary to give a reason for his coming, some obvious absurdity, like: "I was passing on business, and I thought I'd just drop in for a second."

All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends, the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre--all of them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more dose. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter, but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: "He, he, he!" V

There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, which the peasants call "sparrow-nights." There was one such sparrow-night in my own personal life....

I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge, ill-boding fire in the sky.

I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road, the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that everything is looking at me and listening for me to die.

Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin, my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred, and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them.

What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.

I hide my head under the pillow, shut my eyes and wait, wait.... My spine is cold. It almost contracts within me. And I feel that death will approach me only from behind, very quietly.

"Kivi, kivi." A squeak sounds in the stillness of the night. I do not know whether it is in my heart or in the street.

God, how awful! I would drink some more water; but now I dread opening my eyes, and fear to raise my head. The terror is unaccountable, animal. I cannot understand why I am afraid. Is it because I want to live, or because a new and unknown pain awaits me?

Upstairs, above the ceiling, a moan, then a laugh ... I listen. A little after steps sound on the staircase. Someone hurries down, then up again. In a minute steps sound downstairs again. Someone stops by my door and listens.

"Who's there?" I call.

The door opens. I open my eyes boldly and see my wife. Her face is pale and her eyes red with weeping.

"You're not asleep, Nicolai Stiepanovich?" she asks.

"What is it?"

"For God's sake go down to Liza. Something is wrong with her."

"Very well ... with pleasure," I murmur, very glad that I am not alone. "Very well ... immediately."

As I follow my wife I hear what she tells me, and from agitation understand not a word. Bright spots from her candle dance over the steps of the stairs; our long shadows tremble; my feet catch in the skirts of my dressing-gown. My breath goes, and it seems to me that someone is chasing me, trying to seize my back. "I shall die here on the staircase, this second," I think, "this second." But we have passed the staircase, the dark hall with the Italian window and we go into Liza's room. She sits in bed in her chemise; her bare legs hang down and she moans.

"Oh, my God ... oh, my God!" she murmurs, half shutting her eyes from our candles. "I can't, I can't."

"Liza, my child," I say, "what's the matter?"

Seeing me, she calls out and falls on my neck.

"Papa darling," she sobs. "Papa dearest ... my sweet. I don't know what it is.... It hurts."

She embraces me, kisses me and lisps endearments which I heard her lisp when she was still a baby.

"Be calm, my child. God's with you," I say. "You mustn't cry. Something hurts me too."

I try to cover her with the bedclothes; my wife gives her to drink; and both of us jostle in confusion round the bed. My shoulders push into hers, and at that moment I remember how we used to bathe our children.

"But help her, help her!" my wife implores. "Do something!" And what can I do? Nothing. There is some weight on the girl's soul; but I understand nothing, know nothing and can only murmur:

"It's nothing, nothing.... It will pass.... Sleep, sleep."

As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and irresolute, then aloud, in two voices. I never put any value on such signs as dogs' whining or screeching owls; but now my heart contracts painfully, and I hasten to explain the howling.

"Nonsense," I think. "It's the influence of one organism on another. My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to the dog. That's all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and previsions."

A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still.

There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings in one's ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed.... The dawn is still far away.

But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window.

"Nicolai Stiepanovich!" I hear a whisper. "Nicolai Stiepanovich!"

I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window, close against the wall stands a woman in a blade dress. She is brightly lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale, stem and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles.

"It is I...." she says, "I ... Katy!"

In the moon all women's eyes are big and black, people are taller and paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the first moment.

"What's the matter?"

"Forgive me," she says. "I suddenly felt so dreary ... I could not bear it. So I came here. There's a light in your window ... and I decided to knock.... Forgive me.... Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are you doing now?"

"Nothing. Insomnia."

Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of confidence.

"Nicolai Stiepanovich!" she says imploringly, stretching out both her hands to me. "Dear, I beg you ... I implore.... If you do not despise my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you."

"What is it?"

"Take my money."

"What next? What's the good of your money to me?"

"You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will take it? Yes? Dear ... Yes?"

She looks into my face eagerly and repeats:

"Yes? You will take it?"

"No, my dear, I won't take it....", I say. "Thank you."

She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my refusal would not allow any further talk of money.

"Go home to sleep," I say. "I'll see you to-morrow."

"It means, you don't consider me your friend?" she asks sadly.

"I don't say that. But your money is no good to me."

"Forgive me," she says lowering her voice by a full octave. "I understand you. To be obliged to a person like me ... a retired actress... But good-bye."

And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say "Good- bye." VI

I am in Kharkov.

Since it would be useless to fight against my present mood, and I have no power to do it, I made up my mind that the last days of my life shall be irreproachable, on the formal side. If I am not right with my family, which I certainly admit, I will try at least to do as it wishes. Besides I am lately become so indifferent that it's positively all the same, to me whether I go to Kharkov, or Paris, or Berditshev.

I arrived here at noon and put up at a hotel not far from the cathedral. The train made me giddy, the draughts blew through me, and now I am sitting on the bed with my head in my hands waiting for the tic. I ought to go to my professor friends to-day, but I have neither the will nor the strength.

The old hall-porter comes in to ask whether I have brought my own bed- clothes. I keep him about five minutes asking him questions about Gnekker, on whose account I came here. The porter happens to be Kharkov- born, and knows the town inside out; but he doesn't remember any family with the name of Gnekker. I inquire about the estate. The answer is the same.

The clock in the passage strikes one,... two,... three.... The last months of my life, while I wait for death, seem to me far longer than my whole life. Never before could I reconcile myself to the slowness of time as I can now. Before, when I had to wait for a train at the station, or to sit at an examination, a quarter of an hour would seem an eternity. Now I can sit motionless in bed the whole night long, quite calmly thinking that there will be the same long, colourless night to- morrow, and the next day....

In the passage the clock strikes five, six, seven.... It grows dark. There is dull pain in my cheek--the beginning of the tic. To occupy myself with thoughts, I return to my old point of view, when I was not indifferent, and ask: Why do I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sit in this little room, on this bed with a strange grey blanket? Why do I look at this cheap tin washstand and listen to the wretched clock jarring in the passage? Is all this worthy of my fame and my high position among people? And I answer these questions with a smile. My naïveté seems funny to me--the naïveté with which as a young man I exaggerated the value of fame and of the exclusive position which famous men enjoy. I am famous, my name is spoken with reverence. My portrait has appeared in "Niva" and in "The Universal Illustration." I've even read my biography in a German paper, but what of that? I sit lonely, by myself, in a strange city, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my palm....

Family scandals, the hardness of creditors, the rudeness of railway men, the discomforts of the passport system, the expensive and unwholesome food at the buffets, the general coarseness and roughness of people,--all this and a great deal more that would take too long to put down, concerns me as much as it concerns any bourgeois who is known only in his own little street. Where is the exclusiveness of my position then? We will admit that I am infinitely famous, that I am a hero of whom my country is proud. All the newspapers give bulletins of my illness, the post is already bringing in sympathetic addresses from my friends, my pupils, and the public. But all this will not save me from dying in anguish on a stranger's bed in utter loneliness. Of course there is no one to blame for this. But I must confess I do not like my popularity. I feel that it has deceived me.

At about ten I fall asleep, and, in spite of the tic sleep soundly, and would sleep for a long while were I not awakened. Just after one there is a sudden knock on my door.

"Who's there?"

"A telegram."

"You could have brought it to-morrow," I storm, as I take the telegram from the porter. "Now I shan't sleep again."

"I'm sorry. There was a light in your room. I thought you were not asleep."

I open the telegram and look first at the signature--my wife's. What does she want?

"Gnekker married Liza secretly yesterday. Return."

I read the telegram. For a long while I am not startled. Not Gnekker's or Liza's action frightens me, but the indifference with which I receive the news of their marriage. Men say that philosophers and true savants are indifferent. It is untrue. Indifference is the paralysis of the soul, premature death.

I go to bed again and begin to ponder with what thoughts I can occupy myself. What on earth shall I think of? I seem to have thought over everything, and now there is nothing powerful enough to rouse my thought.

When the day begins to dawn, I sit in bed clasping my knees and, for want of occupation I try to know myself. "Know yourself" is good, useful advice; but it is a pity that the ancients did not think of showing us the way to avail ourselves of it.

Before, when I had the desire to understand somebody else, or myself, I used not to take into consideration actions, wherein everything is conditional, but desires. Tell me what you want, and I will tell you what you are.

And now I examine myself. What do I want?