Текст книги "The Eternal Husband and Other Stories"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

And just as Ivan Ilyich was addressing himself to the bride again, trying this time to get at her with some quip, the tall officer suddenly jumped over to her and swung himself down on one knee. She jumped up from the sofa at once and fluttered off with him to line up for the quadrille. The officer did not even apologize, nor did she even glance at the general as she left, as if she were even glad of her deliverance.

“However, essentially she’s in her rights,” thought Ivan Ilyich, “and besides, they don’t know propriety.”

“Hm… you mustn’t stand on ceremony, brother Porfiry,” he turned to Pseldonymov. “Perhaps you have something there… to tend to… or whatever… please, don’t be embarrassed.—Is he keeping watch on me, or what?” he added to himself.

He was beginning to find Pseldonymov unbearable, with his long neck and eyes fixed intently on him. In short, all this was not it, not it at all, but Ivan Ilyich was still far from wanting to admit it.

The quadrille began.

“Shall I, Your Excellency?” Akim Petrovich asked, deferentially holding the bottle in his hands and preparing to fill His Excellency’s glass.

“I… I don’t really know if…”

But Akim Petrovich, with a reverently beaming face, was already pouring the champagne. Having filled his glass, he also, as if on the sly, as if thievishly, shrinking and cringing, filled his own, with the difference that he filled it one whole finger less, which was somehow more deferential. He was like a woman in childbirth sitting next to his immediate superior. What indeed was he to talk about? Yet he had to entertain His Excellency even out of duty, since he had the honor of keeping him company. The champagne served as a way out, and it was even pleasing to His Excellency to have his glass filled—not for the sake of the champagne, which was warm and the most natural swill, but just so, morally pleasing.

“The old boy wants a drink himself,” thought Ivan Ilyich, “and he doesn’t dare without me. I mustn’t hinder… And it’s ridiculous if the bottle just stands between us.”

He took a sip, which in any case seemed better than just sitting there.

“I’m here,” he began, with pauses and emphases, “I’m here, so to speak, by chance, and, of course, it may be that the others find… that it’s… so to speak, in-ap-propriate for me to be at such a… gathering.”

Akim Petrovich was silent and listened with timid curiosity.

“But I hope you understand why I’m here… It’s not really that I came to drink wine. Heh, heh!”

Akim Petrovich was about to chuckle along with His Excellency, but somehow stopped short and again did not respond with anything reassuring.

“I’m here… in order, so to speak, to encourage… to show, so to speak, a moral, so to speak, goal,” Ivan Ilyich went on, vexed at Akim Petrovich’s obtuseness, but suddenly fell silent himself. He saw that poor Akim Petrovich had even lowered his eyes, as if he were guilty of something. The general, in some perplexity, hastened to take another sip from his glass, while Akim Petrovich, as if his whole salvation lay in it, seized the bottle and poured more.

“It’s not that you have so many resources,” thought Ivan Ilyich, looking sternly at poor Akim Petrovich. The latter, sensing this stern general’s glance on him, resolved now to be definitively silent and not raise his eyes. So they sat facing each other for two minutes or so, a painful two minutes for Akim Petrovich.

A couple of words about this Akim Petrovich. He was a placid man, like a hen, of the oldest cast, nurtured on obsequiousness, and yet a kind man and even a noble one. He came from Petersburg Russians—that is, both his father and his father’s father were born, grew up, and served in Petersburg and never once left Petersburg. These are a totally special type of Russian people. They have scarcely the faintest notion of Russia, and that does not trouble them at all. Their whole interest is confined to Petersburg and, above all, to the place where they serve. All their cares are concentrated around penny preference, grocery shop, and monthly salary. They do not know even a single Russian custom, nor a single Russian song, except “Luchinushka,” ²⁴and that only because barrel organs play it. However, there are two essential and unshakable tokens by which you may instantly distinguish a true Russian from a Petersburg Russian. The first is that all Petersburg Russians, all, without exception, always say Academic Bulletinand never Petersburg Bulletin. ²⁵The second, equally essential token is that a Petersburg Russian never uses the word “breakfast,” but always says “Frühstück,” ²⁶putting special emphasis on the Früh. By these basic and distinctive tokens you can always distinguish them: in short, this is a humble type and was formed definitively over the last thirty-five years. However, Akim Petrovich was by no means a fool. Had the general asked him something appropriate for him, he would have replied and kept up the conversation, whereas it was quite unfitting for a subordinate to answer such questions, though Akim Petrovich was dying of curiosity to learn something more specific about His Excellency’s real intentions …

And meanwhile Ivan Ilyich was falling more and more into reverie and into a certain round of ideas; distracted, he imperceptibly but ceaselessly sipped from his glass. Akim Petrovich at once and most diligently poured more. Both were silent. Ivan Ilyich was beginning to watch the dancing, and soon it attracted his attention somewhat. Suddenly one circumstance even surprised him…

The dancing was indeed merry. Here people danced precisely in simplicity of heart, to make merry and even get wild. Among the dancers very few were adroit; but the non-adroit stomped so hard that they might have been taken for adroit. The officer distinguished himself above all: he especially liked the figures where he remained alone, as in a solo. Then he would bend himself amazingly—namely, standing straight as a milepost, he would suddenly lean to one side so that you would think he was about to fall over, but at the next step he would suddenly lean to the opposite side, at the same sharp angle to the floor. He maintained a most serious expression and danced with the full conviction that everyone was amazed at him. Another gentleman, after getting potted beforehand, prior to the quadrille, fell asleep beside his partner at the second figure, so that his lady had to dance alone. A young registrar, who was dancing away with the lady in the blue scarf, in all the figures and all five quadrilles that had been danced that evening, kept pulling one and the same stunt—namely, he would lag behind his partner a little, pick up the end of her scarf, and, in air, at the changing of partners, would manage to plant about twenty kisses on it. The lady would go sailing on ahead of him as if she noticed nothing. The medical student indeed performed a solo upside down and provoked furious rapture, stomping, and squeals of pleasure. In short, there was unconstraint in the extreme. Ivan Ilyich, in whom the wine was also having its effect, was beginning to smile, but gradually some bitter doubt began to creep into his soul: of course, he very much liked casualness and unconstraint; he had desired, his soul had even called for this casualness, as they were all backing away, but now this casualness was beginning to go beyond limits. One lady, for instance, wearing a shabby blue velvet dress, bought at fourth hand, pinned her skirt up for the sixth figure in such a way that it was as if she were wearing trousers. This was that same Kleopatra Semyonovna with whom one could risk anything, as her partner, the medical student, had put it. Of the medical student there was nothing else to say: simply Fokine. ²⁷How could it be? First they backed away, and then suddenly they got so quickly emancipated! It seemed like nothing, yet this transition was somehow strange: it foreboded something. As if they had totally forgotten there was any Ivan Ilyich in the world. Naturally, he was the first to laugh and he even risked applauding. Akim Petrovich deferentially chuckled in unison with him, though, by the way, with obvious pleasure and not suspecting that His Excellency was already beginning to nurse a new worm in his heart.

“You dance nicely, young man,” Ivan Ilyich felt forced to say to the student as he was passing by: the quadrille had just ended.

The student turned sharply to him, pulled some sort of grimace, and, bringing his face indecently close to His Excellency’s, gave a loud cock-crow. This was too much. Ivan Ilyich got up from the table. In spite of that, there followed a burst of irrepressible laughter, because the cock-crow was astonishingly natural, and the whole grimace was completely unexpected. Ivan Ilyich was still standing in perplexity when Pseldonymov himself suddenly came and, bowing, began inviting him to supper. After him came his mother.

“Your Excellency,” she said, bowing, “do us the honor, dearie, don’t scorn our poverty…”

“I… I really don’t know…” Ivan Ilyich began, “it was not for this that I… I… was just about to leave…”

He was indeed holding his hat in his hand. Not only that: just then, at that very instant, he had given himself his word of honor that he would leave without fail, at once, whatever the cost, and not stay for anything, and… and he stayed. A minute later he was leading the procession to the table. Pseldonymov and his mother went ahead, clearing the way for him. He was seated in the place of honor, and again a full bottle of champagne appeared before him. There were appetizers: herring and vodka. He reached out, poured himself a huge glass of vodka, and drank it. He had never drunk vodka before. He felt as if he were tumbling down a mountain, falling, falling, falling, that he must hold on, get a grip on something, but there was no opportunity for that.

His position was indeed becoming more and more peculiar. Not only that: it was some sort of mockery of fate. God knows what had happened to him in one little hour. When he came in, he was, so to speak, opening his embrace to all mankind and all his subordinates; and here, before one little hour had passed, he felt and knew with all his aching heart that he hated Pseldonymov, cursed him, and his wife, and his wedding. Not only that: from his face, from his eyes alone, he could see that Pseldonymov also hated him, that his eyes were all but saying: “Go to blazes, curse you! Fastened yourself on my neck!…” All this he had long since read in his look.

Of course, even now, as he was sitting down at the table, Ivan Ilyich would sooner have let his hand be cut off than admit sincerely, not only aloud, but even to himself, that all this was indeed exactly so. The moment had not yet fully come, and for now there was still a certain moral balance. But his heart, his heart… it was sick! it begged for freedom, air, rest. Ivan Ilyich was all too kindly a man.

He knew, he knew very well, that he should have left long ago, and not only so as to leave, but so as to save himself. That all this had suddenly become something else—well, had turned out totally unlike his dream on the planks that evening.

“Why did I come? Did I really come to eat and drink here?” he asked himself, munching on pickled herring. He even got into negation. There were moments when irony at his great deed stirred in his soul. He was even beginning not to understand himself why, in fact, he had come.

But how could he leave? To leave like that, without going through with it, was impossible. “What will people say? They’ll say I go dragging myself around to indecent places. In fact, it will even come out that way if I don’t go through with it. What, for instance, will be said tomorrow (because it will spread everywhere), by Stepan Nikiforovich, by Semyon Ivanych, in the offices, at the Shembels’, at the Shubins’? No, I must leave in such a way that they all understand why I came, I must reveal the moral purpose…” And meanwhile this touching moment refused to be caught. “They don’t even respect me,” he went on. “What are they laughing at? They’re so casual, as if unfeeling… Yes, I’ve long suspected the whole younger generation of being unfeeling! I must stay, whatever the cost!… They’ve just been dancing, but once they’ve gathered around the table… I’ll start talking about problems, about reforms, about Russia’s greatness… I’ll still get them carried away! Yes! Maybe absolutely nothing is lost yet… Maybe this is how it always is in reality. Only how shall I begin with them so as to attract them? What sort of method must I come up with? I’m at a loss, simply at a loss… And what do they want, what do they demand?… I see they’re laughing at something over there… Can it be at me, oh, Lord God! But what is it that I want… why am I here, why don’t I leave, what am I after?…” He thought this, and some sort of shame, some deep, unbearable shame wrung his heart more and more.

But it all went on that way, one thing after another.

Exactly two minutes after he sat down at the table, a dreadful thought took possession of his whole being. He suddenly felt that he was terribly drunk, that is, not as before, but definitively drunk. The cause of it was the glass of vodka, which, drunk on top of the champagne, produced an immediate effect. He felt, he sensed with his whole being, that he was definitively weakening. Of course, this greatly increased his bravado, yet consciousness did not abandon him, but cried out: “Not nice, not nice at all, and even quite indecent!” Of course, his unsteady, drunken thoughts could not settle on any one point: suddenly, even tangibly for himself, something like two sides appeared in him. On one was bravado, a yearning for victory, the overthrowing of obstacles, and a desperate conviction that he would still reach his goal. The other side made itself known to him by a tormenting ache in his soul and some gnawing at his heart. “What will people say? where will it end? what will tomorrow bring, tomorrow, tomorrow!…”

Earlier he had somehow vaguely sensed that he already had enemies among the guests. “That’s because I was drunk then, too,” he thought with tormenting doubt. What was his horror now, when he indeed became convinced, by indubitable signs, that he indeed had enemies at the table, and it was no longer possible to doubt it.

“And for what? for what?” he thought.

At this table all thirty guests were placed, some of whom were definitively done in. The others behaved with a certain nonchalant, malignant independence; they all shouted, talked loudly, offered premature toasts, fired bread balls with the ladies. One, a sort of uncomely person in a greasy frock coat, fell off his chair as soon as he sat at the table, and remained that way until the end of the supper. Another absolutely insisted on climbing onto the table and delivering a toast, and only the officer, who grabbed him by the coattails, restrained his premature enthusiasm. The supper was a perfect omniumgatherum, though a cook had been hired to prepare it, some general’s serf: there was a galantine, there was tongue with potatoes, there were meat cakes with green peas, there was, finally, a goose, and, to crown it all, blancmange. For drinks there were beer, vodka, and sherry. A bottle of champagne stood in front of the general alone, which forced him to pour for Akim Petrovich as well, since the man no longer dared use his own initiative at supper. For toasts the rest of the guests were meant to drink Georgian wine or whatever there happened to be. The table itself consisted of many tables put together, among them even a card table. It was covered with many tablecloths, including a colored Yaroslavl one. Gentlemen and ladies were seated alternately. Pseldonymov’s maternal parent did not want to sit at the table; she bustled about and gave orders. Instead there appeared a malignant female figure who had not made an appearance earlier, in a sort of reddish silk dress, with a bound cheek, and in the tallest of bonnets. As it turned out, this was the bride’s mother, who had finally agreed to come from the back room for supper. She had not come out till then on account of her implacable enmity for Pseldonymov’s mother; but of that we shall speak later. This lady looked spitefully, even mockingly, at the general, and apparently did not wish to be introduced to him. To Ivan Ilyich this figure seemed highly suspect. But, besides her, certain other persons were also suspect and inspired an involuntary apprehension and alarm. It even seemed that they were in some conspiracy among themselves, and precisely against Ivan Ilyich. At least it seemed so to him, and in the course of the supper he became more and more convinced of it. Namely: there was malignancy in one gentleman with a little beard, a free artist of some sort; he even glanced several times at Ivan Ilyich and then, turning to his neighbor, whispered something in his ear. Another, a student, was in truth already thoroughly drunk, but all the same was suspect by certain tokens. The medical student also boded ill. Even the officer himself was not altogether trustworthy. But an especial and obvious hatred shone from the collaborator on The Firebrand:he sprawled so in his chair, had such a proud and presumptuous air, snorted so independently! And though the rest of the guests did not pay any special attention to the collaborator, who had written only four little ditties for The Firebrand, thus becoming a liberal, and evidently even disliked him, still, when a bread ball suddenly fell next to Ivan Ilyich, obviously sent in his direction, he was ready to stake his head that the perpetrator of this bread ball was none other than the collaborator on The Firebrand.

All this, of course, affected him in a lamentable fashion.

Particularly disagreeable was yet another observation: Ivan Ilyich was fully convinced that he was beginning to articulate words somehow unclearly and with difficulty, that he wanted to say a great deal, but his tongue would not move. Then, that he had suddenly begun as if to forget himself and, above all, out of the blue, would suddenly snort and laugh when there was nothing at all to laugh at. This disposition quickly passed after a glass of champagne, which Ivan Ilyich, though he had poured it for himself, had no wish to drink, but suddenly drank somehow quite accidentally. After this glass, he suddenly almost wanted to weep. He felt he was lapsing into the most peculiar sentimentality; he was beginning to love again, to love everybody, even Pseldonymov, even the collaborator on The Firebrand. He suddenly wanted to embrace them all, to forget everything and make peace. Not only that: to tell them everything frankly, everything, everything, that is, what a kind and nice man he was, with what excellent abilities. How he was going to be useful to the fatherland, how he was able to make the fair sex laugh, and, above all, what a progressist he was, how humanely he was prepared to condescend to everyone, to the most lowly, and, finally, in conclusion, to tell frankly the whole motive that had induced him to come, uninvited, to Pseldonymov’s, drink two bottles of champagne, and overjoy them with his presence.

“The truth, the sacred truth first of all, and frankness! I’ll get them with frankness. They’ll believe me, I see it clearly; they even look hostile, but when I reveal everything to them, I’ll subject them irresistibly. They’ll fill their glasses and, with a shout, drink my health. The officer, I’m sure of it, will break his glass on his spur. There may even be a shout of ‘hurrah!’ Even if they should decide to toss me hussar fashion, I wouldn’t resist, it would even be rather nice. I’ll kiss the bride on the forehead; she’s a sweetie. Akim Petrovich is also a very good man. Pseldonymov, of course, will improve in time. He lacks, so to speak, this worldly polish… And though, of course, this whole new generation lacks this delicacy of heart, but… but I’ll tell them about the modern destiny of Russia among the other European powers. I’ll mention the peasant question, too, yes, and… and they’ll all love me, and I’ll come out with glory!…”

These dreams were, of course, very pleasant, but the unpleasant thing was that amid all these rosy hopes Ivan Ilyich suddenly discovered in himself yet another unexpected ability: namely, spitting. At least the saliva suddenly began leaping from his mouth quite regardless of his will. He noticed it because Akim Petrovich, whose cheek he had sprayed, was sitting there not daring, out of deference, to wipe it off right away. Ivan Ilyich took a napkin and suddenly wiped it off himself. But this at once appeared so preposterous to him, so beyond anything reasonable, that he fell silent and began to be surprised. Akim Petrovich, though he had been drinking, sat all the same as if he were in shock. Ivan Ilyich now realized that, for almost a quarter of an hour already, he had been telling him about some most interesting topic, but that Akim Petrovich, while listening to him, was as if not only embarrassed, but even afraid of something. Pseldonymov, who was sitting two chairs away, also kept stretching his neck toward him, his head inclined to one side, listening with a most disagreeable air. He actually was as if keeping watch on him. Glancing around at the guests, he saw that many were looking straight at him and guffawing. But the strangest thing of all was that this did not embarrass him in the least; on the contrary, he sipped once more from his glass and suddenly started speaking for all to hear.

“I was saying!” he began as loudly as he could, “gentlemen, I was just saying to Akim Petrovich that Russia… yes, precisely Russia… in short, you understand what I mean to sa-sa-say… Russia, in my deepest conviction, experiences hu-humaneness…”

“Hu-humaneness!” came from the other end of the table.

“Hu-hu!”

“Coo-coo!”

Ivan Ilyich paused. Pseldonymov rose from his chair and started peering: who had shouted? Akim Petrovich was covertly shaking his head, as if admonishing the guests. Ivan Ilyich noticed it very well, but painfully held his tongue.

“Humaneness!” he went on stubbornly. “And this evening… and precisely this evening I was saying to Stepan Niki-ki-forovich… yes… that… that the renewal, so to speak, of things…”

“Your Excellency!” came loudly from the other end of the table.

“What can I do for you?” the interrupted Ivan Ilyich replied, trying to make out who had shouted.

“Precisely nothing, Your Excellency, I got carried away, please continue, con-tin-ue!” the voice came again.

Ivan Ilyich winced.

“The renewal, so to speak, of these very things…”

“Your Excellency!” the voice shouted again.

“What is it you want?”

“Hello there!”

This time Ivan Ilyich could not restrain himself. He interrupted his speech and turned to the offender and violator of order. This was a still very young student, totally crocked and arousing enormous suspicion. He had been hollering for a long time and even broke a glass and two plates, insisting that that was what was done at weddings. At the same moment that Ivan Ilyich turned to him, the officer began to reprimand the shouter sternly.

“What’s with you, why are you hollering? You ought to be taken out, that’s what!”

“It’s not about you, Your Excellency, it’s not about you! Do continue!” shouted the merrymaking schoolboy, sprawling on his chair. “Do continue, I’m listening and I’m very, ve-ry, ve-ry pleased with you! Pra-aiseworthy, pra-aiseworthy!”

“A drunken brat!” Pseldonymov prompted in a whisper.

“I can see he’s drunk, but…”

“It’s that I just told an amusing anecdote, Your Excellency!” the officer began. “About a certain lieutenant of our command, who had exactly that way of talking to superiors; so now he’s imitating him. To every word of his superior, he would add: pra-aiseworthy, pra-aiseworthy! He was expelled from the service for it ten years ago.”

“Wha-what lieutenant is that?”

“From our command, Your Excellency, he went mad over this praiseworthy. First they admonished him with milder measures, then they put him under arrest… His superior officer admonished him like a father; and all he said was: pra-aiseworthy, pra-aiseworthy! And it’s strange: he was a courageous officer, six foot six. They wanted to court-martial him, but noticed that he was crazy.”

“Meaning… a prankster. For prankishness they shouldn’t be so severe… I, for my part, am ready to forgive…”

“There was medical evidence, Your Excellency.”

“What! an autopsy?”

“Good heavens, he was perfectly alive, sir.”

A loud and almost general burst of laughter came from the guests, who in the beginning had behaved themselves decorously. Ivan Ilyich became furious.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he cried, at first almost without stammering, “I am quite well able to distinguish that autopsies are not performed on the living. I thought that in his madness he was no longer living… that is, already dead… that is, already dead… that is, I mean to say… that you don’t love me… And yet I love you all… yes, and I love Por… Porfiry… I humiliate myself by saying so…”

At that moment an enormous spit flew out of Ivan Ilyich’s mouth and spattered on the tablecloth in a most conspicuous place. Pseldonymov rushed to wipe it up with his napkin. This last disaster finally crushed him.

“Gentlemen, this is too much!” he cried out in despair.

“A drunk man, Your Excellency,” Pseldonymov prompted again.

“Porfiry! I see that you… all… yes! I say that I hope… yes, I challenge you all to say: how have I humiliated myself?”

Ivan Ilyich was on the verge of tears.

“Your Excellency, good heavens, sir!”

“Porfiry, I turn to you… Say, if I came… yes… yes, to the wedding, I had a goal. I wanted to morally uplift… I wanted them to feel. I address you all: am I very humiliated in your eyes, or not?”

Deathly silence. That was just the thing, that there was deathly silence, and to such a categorical question. “Why, why don’t they cry out at least at such a moment!” flashed in His Excellency’s head. But the guests only exchanged looks. Akim Petrovich was sitting there more dead than alive, and Pseldonymov, numb with fear, repeated to himself a terrible question, which had already presented itself to him long before:

“What am I going to get for all this tomorrow?”

Suddenly the already very drunk collaborator on The Firebrand, who had been sitting in glum silence, addressed Ivan Ilyich directly and, his eyes flashing, began to reply on behalf of the whole company.

“Yes, sir!” he cried in a thundering voice, “yes, sir, you’ve humiliated yourself, yes, sir, you’re a retrograde… Re-tro-grade!”

“Young man, come to your senses! To whom, as it were, are you speaking!” Ivan Ilyich cried furiously, again jumping up from his seat.

“To you, and, secondly, I’m not a young man… You came to show off and seek popularity.”

“Pseldonymov, what is it!” cried Ivan Ilyich.

But Pseldonymov jumped up in such horror that he stood like a post and absolutely did not know what to start doing. The guests, too, froze in their places. The artist and the student were applauding and shouting, “Bravo, bravo!”

The collaborator went on shouting with irrepressible rage:

“Yes, you came to flaunt your humaneness! You interfered with everybody’s merrymaking. You drank champagne without realizing that it was too expensive for a clerk who makes ten roubles a month, and I suspect that you’re one of those superiors who relish their subordinates’ young wives! Not only that, I’m convinced that you’re in favor of tax-farming… Yes, yes, yes!”

“Pseldonymov, Pseldonymov!” Ivan Ilyich cried, holding his arms out to him. He felt that each of the collaborator’s words was like a new dagger in his heart.

“Wait, Your Excellency, kindly do not worry!” Pseldonymov cried out energetically, jumped over to the collaborator, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him away from the table. It was even impossible to expect such physical strength from the scrawny Pseldonymov. But the collaborator was very drunk, and Pseldonymov perfectly sober. Then he gave him several whacks on the back and chucked him out the door.

“You’re all scoundrels!” the collaborator cried. “By tomorrow I’ll make caricatures of you all in The Firebrand!…”

They all jumped up from their seats.

“Your Excellency, Your Excellency!” cried Pseldonymov, his mother, and some of the guests, crowding around the general. “Calm yourself, Your Excellency!”

“No, no!” cried the general, “I’m destroyed… I came… I wanted, so to speak, to baptize. And look here, for all that, for all that!”

He sank onto the chair as if unconscious, put both hands on the table, and lowered his head to them, right into a dish of blancmange. No need to describe the universal horror. A minute later he rose, as if wishing to leave, staggered, tripped against the leg of a chair, fell flat on the floor, and started snoring …

This happens to non-drinkers when they accidentally get drunk. To the last stroke, to the last instant they remain conscious, and then suddenly fall as if cut down. Ivan Ilyich lay on the floor, having lost all consciousness. Pseldonymov seized himself by the hair and froze in that position. The guests hastily began to depart, each discussing in his own way what had happened. It was about three o’clock in the morning.

The main thing was that Pseldonymov’s situation was much worse than could have been imagined, quite apart from the whole attractiveness of the present circumstances. And while Ivan Ilyich is lying on the floor, with Pseldonymov standing over him, desperately tugging himself by the hair, let us interrupt the chosen current of our story and give a few words of explanation about Porfiry Petrovich Pseldonymov himself.

Still as recently as a month before his marriage, he was perishing quite irretrievably. He came from the provinces, where his father had once served as something and where he had died while under prosecution. When, some five months before the wedding, after perishing for a whole year in Petersburg, Pseldonymov got his ten-rouble post, he was resurrected in body and spirit, but circumstances soon laid him low again. In the whole world there remained only two Pseldonymovs, he and his mother, who had left the provinces after her husband’s death. Mother and son were perishing together in the cold and feeding on doubtful substances. There were days when Pseldonymov took a mug and went to the Fontanka himself to fetch water, which he also drank there. Having obtained his post, he and his mother somehow settled themselves in corners somewhere. She began taking in laundry, and he knocked together some savings over four months, so as somehow to provide himself with boots and a bit of an overcoat. And how much grief he endured in his office: his superiors would approach him asking him if it was long since he had taken a bath. There was a rumor that he had nests of bedbugs thriving under the collar of his uniform. But Pseldonymov was a man of firm character. In appearance, he was quiet and placid; he had very little education, and hardly ever was any conversation heard from him. I do not know positively whether he thought, made plans and systems, or dreamed of anything. But instead he was developing some instinctive, deep-seated, unconscious resolve to make his way out of his nasty situation. There was an antlike persistence in him: destroy an anthill and they will immediately start rebuilding it, destroy it again—again they will rebuild it, and so on without tiring. This was a nest-building and domestic being. One could see written on his brow that he would find his way, make his nest, and perhaps even put something aside. His mother alone in the whole world loved him and loved him to distraction. She was a firm, tireless, hardworking woman, and kind besides. They would just have gone on living in their corners for another five or six years, until circumstances changed, had they not run into the retired titular councillor Mlekopitaev, who had been a treasurer serving somewhere in the provinces, but had recently moved to Petersburg and settled there with his family. He knew Pseldonymov and had once owed something to his father. He had a bit of money, not much, of course, but he did have it; how much there was in reality—of this no one knew anything, neither his wife, nor his elder daughter, nor his relations. He had two daughters, and since he was a terrible despot, a drunkard, a domestic tyrant, and ailing besides, he suddenly took a notion to marry one daughter to Pseldonymov: “I know him,” he said, “the father was a good man, and the son will be a good man.” Whatever Mlekopitaev wanted, he did; no sooner said than done. He was a very strange despot. He spent most of his time sitting in his armchair, some illness having deprived him of the use of his legs, though that did not prevent him from drinking vodka. He drank and swore the whole day long. He was a wicked man; he absolutely had to torment someone constantly. For that he kept several distant female relations around him: his own sister, ailing and shrewish; his wife’s two sisters, also wicked and multiloquent; and then his old aunt, who had broken a rib on some occasion. He kept yet another sponger, a Russified German woman, for her talent in telling him tales from The Thousand and One Nights. All his pleasure consisted in picking on these unfortunate hangers-on, cursing them constantly and seven ways to Sunday, though none of them, including his wife, who had been born with a toothache, dared to make a peep before him. He got them to quarrel among themselves, invented and fomented gossip and strife among them, and afterward guffawed and rejoiced seeing how they all nearly came to blows among themselves. He was overjoyed when his elder daughter, who for about ten years had lived in poverty with some officer, her husband, was finally widowed and moved in with him, bringing three small, ailing children. Her children he could not stand, but since their appearance increased the material on which his daily experiments could be conducted, the old man was very pleased. This whole heap of wicked women and ailing children, together with their tormentor, crowded into a wooden house on the Petersburg side, not eating enough, because the old man was miserly and handed out money by kopecks, though he did not stint on his vodka; not sleeping enough, because the old man suffered from insomnia and demanded to be entertained. In short, the whole thing lived in poverty and cursed its fate. It was at this time that Mlekopitaev sought out Pseldonymov. He was struck by his long nose and humble look. His puny and homely younger daughter had then turned seventeen. Though she had once attended some German Schule, she had not learned much more in it than the rudiments. After that, she grew up, scrofulous and sapless, under the crutch of her lame and drunken parent, amid a bedlam of household gossip, spying, and calumny. She never had any girlfriends, or any intelligence. She had long been wishing to get married. With other people she was silent, but at home, by her mummy and the spongers, she was wicked and piercing as a little drill. She particularly liked pinching and dealing out swats to her sister’s children, peaching on them for stolen sugar or bread, which caused an endless and unquenchable quarrel between her and her elder sister. The old man himself offered her to Pseldonymov. But he, wretched though he was, nevertheless asked for some time to reflect. He and his mother pondered long together. But the house was to be registered in the bride’s name, and though it was wooden, though it was one-storied and disgusting, it was still worth something. On top of that came four hundred roubles—when would he ever save up so much! “Why am I taking a man into my house?” the drunken tyrant shouted. “First, since you’re all females, and I’m sick of just females. I want Pseldonymov to dance to my music, too, because I’m his benefactor. Second, I’m taking him, because you all don’t want it and you’re angry. So I’ll do it just to spite you. What I’ve said I’ll do, I’ll do! And you, Porfirka, beat her when she’s your wife; she’s had seven demons sitting in her since the day she was born. Drive them all out, I’ll even get the stick ready…”