Текст книги "Demons"

"Tell him that I have this wish and that I can wait no longer, but that I was not deceiving him just now. He left, perhaps, because he's a very honest man and did not like it that I seemed to be deceiving him. I wasn't deceiving him; I really want to publish and to start a press..."

"He is honest, honest," I confirmed with fervor.

"However, if it doesn't get arranged by tomorrow, then I will go myself, whatever may come of it, and even if everyone finds out."

"I cannot come to you before three o'clock tomorrow," I observed, recollecting myself somewhat.

"At three o'clock, then. I guessed right, then, at Stepan Trofimovich's yesterday, that you are somewhat devoted to me?" she smiled, pressing my hand in parting and hurrying to the abandoned Mavriky Nikolaevich.

I left, oppressed by my promise, and not understanding what had happened. I had seen a woman in real despair, who was not afraid to compromise herself by confiding in a man who was almost a stranger. Her feminine smile in a moment so difficult for her, and the hint that she had already noticed my feelings yesterday, simply stabbed my heart; yet I felt pity, pity—that was all! Her secrets suddenly became something sacred for me, and even if they had been revealed to me right then, I think I would have stopped my ears and refused to hear any more. I only had a foreboding of something... And yet I had absolutely no idea how I was going to arrange anything here. What's more, even then I still did not know precisely what had to be arranged: a meeting, but what sort of meeting? And how bring them together? All my hopes lay in Shatov, though I might have known beforehand that he would not help with anything. But I rushed to him anyway.

IV

Only in the evening, past seven, did I find him at home. To my surprise, he had visitors—Alexei Nilych, and another gentleman I was half acquainted with, a certain Shigalyov, the brother of Virginsky's wife.

This Shigalyov must already have spent about two months in our town; I do not know where he came from; the only thing I had heard about him was that he had published some article in a progressive Petersburg magazine. Virginsky introduced us by chance in the street. Never in my life have I seen a more grim, gloomy, glowering face on a man. He looked as if he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not just sometime, according to prophecies which might not be fulfilled, but quite definitely, round about morning, the day after tomorrow, at ten twenty-five sharp. Incidentally, we said almost nothing then, but only shook hands, looking like a pair of conspirators. I was struck most of all by the unnatural size of his ears—long, broad, and thick, sticking out somehow peculiarly. His movements were clumsy and slow. If Liputin ever did dream that a phalanstery might be realized in our province, this man was sure to know the day and hour when it would come about. He made a sinister impression on me; meeting him now at Shatov's, I was surprised, all the more so in that Shatov generally had no love of visitors.

Even from the stairs they could be heard talking very loudly, all three at once, and apparently arguing; but as soon as I appeared, they all fell silent. They had been arguing standing up, and now suddenly they all sat down, so that I, too, had to sit down. The stupid silence would not get broken for about three full minutes. Shigalyov, though he recognized me, pretended he did not know me—certainly not from hostility, but just so. Alexei Nilych and I bowed slightly to each other, but silently, and for some reason did not shake hands. Shigalyov finally began looking at me sternly and gloweringly, in the most naive conviction that I would suddenly get up and leave. Finally, Shatov rose from his chair, and everyone else suddenly jumped up. They walked out without saying good-bye; only Shigalyov, already in the doorway, said to Shatov, who was seeing them out:

"Remember, you're obliged to report."

"I spit on your reports, and the devil if I'm obliged to anybody." Shatov saw him out and fastened the door with a hook.

"Snipe!" he said, glancing at me and grinning somehow crookedly.

His face was angry, and I felt it strange that he had begun talking. Usually, whenever I had come to see him before (very rarely, by the way), he would sit glowering in the corner, responding angrily, and only after a long time would become quite animated and begin talking with pleasure. On the other hand, each time he said good-bye, he would unfailingly glower again and let you out as if he were getting rid of a personal enemy.

"I had tea yesterday with this Alexei Nilych," I remarked. "He seems to have gone crazy over atheism."

"Russian atheism has never gone further than a pun," Shatov growled, replacing the burnt-down candle with a new one.

"No, the man doesn't seem to be a punster to me; he seems unable to speak even plainly, to say nothing of punning."

"They're paper people; it all comes from lackeyishness of thinking," ^[55]Shatov observed calmly, sitting down in the corner on a chair and placing both palms on his knees.

"And there's hatred there, too," he said, after a moment's silence. "They'd be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia somehow suddenly got reconstructed, even if it was in their own way, and somehow suddenly became boundlessly rich and happy. They'd have no one to hate then, no one to spit on, nothing to jeer at! All that's there is an endless animal hatred of Russia that has eaten into their organism... And there are no tears invisible to the world under the visible laughter! ^[56]Nothing more false has ever been said in Russia than this phrase about invisible tears!" he cried out, almost with fury.

"Well, God knows what it's all about!" I laughed.

"And you, you're a 'moderate liberal,’” Shatov also grinned. "You know," he suddenly picked up, "maybe that was just silly talk about 'lackeyishness of thinking'; you'll probably say to me at once: 'It's you who were born of a lackey, but I'm no lackey.’”

"Not at all... how could you think such a thing!"

"Don't apologize, I'm not afraid of you. Once I was simply born of a lackey, but now I've become a lackey myself, just like you. Our Russian liberal is first of all a lackey and is only looking for someone's boots to polish."

"What boots? What kind of allegory is that?"

"I wouldn't call it an allegory! You're laughing, I see... Stepan Trofimovich was right to say that I'm lying under a stone, crushed but not crushed to death, I'm just writhing—it's a good comparison."

"Stepan Trofimovich assures us that you've gone crazy over the Germans," I went on laughing. "In fact, we did filch something or other from the Germans and stick it in our pocket."

"We took twenty kopecks, and gave away a hundred roubles of our own."

We were silent for about a minute.

"No, he got it from lying there in America."

"Who? Got what from lying there?"

"Kirillov, I mean. He and I spent four months there, lying on the floor of a hut."

"Have you really been to America?" I was surprised. "You never talk about it."

"What's there to tell? The year before last, three of us went to the American States on an emigrant steamer, on our last pennies, 'in order to try the life of the American worker for ourselves, and thus by personalexperience to test on ourselves the condition of man in his hardest social position. ^[57]That was the goal we set out with."

"Lord!" I laughed, "but for that it would have been better to go somewhere in our province at harvest time, if you wanted to 'test by personal experience'—why on earth go to America!"

"We got hired to work there for an exploiter; six of us Russians were gathered there in all—students, even landowners from their estates, even officers were there, all with the same grand purpose. So we worked, got wet, suffered, wore ourselves out, and finally Kirillov and I left—got sick, couldn't stand it anymore. Our employer-exploiter cheated us when he paid us off; instead of thirty dollars as agreed, he paid me eight and him fifteen; they also beat us there, more than once.

So, without work then, Kirillov and I spent four months lying side by side on the floor in some little town; he thought of one thing, and I of another."

"Can it be that your employer really beat you? In America? How you must have cursed at him!"

"Not in the least. On the contrary, Kirillov and I decided at once that 'we Russians are mere kids next to Americans, and that one must be born in America, or at least live for long years with Americans, to be on the same level with them.' ^[58]Not only that: when they asked us to pay a dollar for something worth a penny, we paid it, not just with pleasure, but even with enthusiasm. We praised everything: spiritualism, lynching, six-shooters, hoboes. Once, on a train, a man went into my pocket, took my hairbrush, and began brushing his hair with it; Kirillov and I just looked at each other and decided that it was good and we liked it very much..."

"Strange that with us such things not only enter our heads, but even get carried out," I observed.

"Paper people," Shatov repeated.

"But, all the same, to cross the ocean on an emigrant steamer to an unknown land, even if it's with the purpose of 'learning by personal experience' and so forth, by God, that seems to have some big-hearted staunchness about it... But how did you get out of there?"

"I wrote to a man in Europe, and he sent me a hundred roubles."

All the while he talked, Shatov stared stubbornly at the ground, as was his custom even when excited. But here he suddenly raised his head.

"And do you want to know the man's name?"

"Who was it?"

"Nikolai Stavrogin."

He suddenly rose, turned to his limewood desk, and began rummaging around on it. There was a vague but trustworthy rumor among us that his wife had for some time had a liaison with Nikolai Stavrogin in Paris, and precisely about two years ago, that is, when Shatov was in America—though, true, long after she had left him in Geneva. "If so, what on earth possessed him now to volunteer the name and smear it about?" the thought came to me.

"I still haven't paid him back," he suddenly turned to me again, looked at me intently, went and sat down in his former place in the corner, and asked abruptly, now in a completely different voice:

"You came for something, of course; what do you want?"

I at once told him everything, in exact historical order, and added that though by now I had had time to think better after today's fever, I had become all the more confused: I understood that there was something very important here for Lizaveta Nikolaevna, I greatly wished to help her, but the whole trouble was that I not only did not know how to keep the promise I had given her, but I no longer even understood what precisely I had promised her. Then I repeated to him imposingly that she did not want and had not intended to deceive him, that there had been some misunderstanding there, and that she had been very upset by his remarkable departure today.

He listened very attentively.

"Maybe I did something stupid today, as my custom is... Well, if she herself didn't understand why I left like that, it's ... so much the better for her."

He rose, went to the door, opened it, and began listening on the stairs.

"Do you want to see this person yourself?"

"That's just what I need, but how?" I jumped up, delighted.

"Let's simply go down while she's sitting alone. He'll beat her up when he comes back, if he finds out we were there. I often go to see her on the quiet. I attacked him today when he began beating her again."

"What do you mean?"

"Precisely that; I dragged him away by the hair; he was on the point of thrashing me for it, but I frightened him, and it ended there. I'm afraid if he comes back drunk and remembers, he'll give her a bad thrashing for it."

We went downstairs at once.

V

The door to the Lebyadkins' place was just closed but not locked, and we walked in freely. Their entire apartment consisted of two ugly little rooms with sooty walls on which the dirty wallpaper hung literally in tatters. There had been a tavern there for a few years, until the owner, Filippov, moved it to his new house. The other rooms once occupied by the tavern were now locked, and these two had fallen to Lebyadkin. The furniture consisted of simple benches and plank tables, except for just one old armchair with a missing arm. In the second room, in the corner, there was a bed with a cotton blanket, which belonged to Mlle. Lebyadkin, while the captain, when he settled down for the night, would collapse each time on the floor, often just as he was. Everywhere there were crumbs, litter, puddles; a big, thick, soaking-wet rag lay in the middle of the floor in the first room, and in the same pool sat an old, worn-out boot. One could see that no one did anything here; no one lit the stoves, cooked the meals; they did not even have a samovar, as Shatov detailed. When the captain arrived with his sister, he was completely destitute and, as Liputin said, went around to certain houses begging; but, having unexpectedly received money, he at once began drinking and went completely off his head from wine, so that he could not be bothered with housekeeping.

Mlle. Lebyadkin, whom I wished so much to see, was sitting placidly and inaudibly in the second room, in the corner, at a wooden kitchen table, on a bench. She did not call out to us when we opened the door, she did not even move from her place. Shatov told me that their door to the front hall even could not be locked, and had once stood wide open for a whole night. By the light of a dim, slender candle in an iron candlestick I made out a woman of perhaps thirty, sickly thin, wearing a dark old cotton dress, her long neck not covered with anything, her scanty dark hair twisted at the nape into a small knot no bigger than a two-year-old child's fist. She looked at us quite gaily. Besides the candlestick, she had on the table before her a small rustic mirror, an old deck of cards, a tattered Songbook, and a little roll of white German bread from which one or two bites had been taken. It was obvious that Mlle. Lebyadkin used white makeup and rouge on her face, and wore lipstick. She also blackened her eyebrows, which were long, thin, and dark even without that. Her narrow and high forehead, in spite of the makeup, was marked rather sharply by three long wrinkles. I knew already that she was lame, but this time she did not get up and walk in our presence. Some time ago, in early youth, this thin face might have been not unattractive; but her quiet, tender gray eyes were remarkable even now; something dreamy and sincere shone in her quiet, almost joyful look. This quiet, serene joy, also expressed in her smile, surprised me after everything I had heard about the Cossack quirt and all the outrages of her dear brother. Strangely, instead of the heavy and even fearful repulsion one usually feels in the presence of such God-afflicted creatures, I found it almost pleasant to look at her from the very first moment, and it was only pity, and by no means repulsion, that came over me afterwards.

"She just sits like that, alone as can be, literally for days on end, without moving; she reads the cards and looks at herself in the mirror," Shatov pointed to her from the threshold. "He doesn't even feed her. The old woman brings her something from the wing every once in a while, for the love of Christ. How can they leave her alone like this with a candle!"

To my surprise, Shatov spoke aloud, as if she were not in the room.

"Good evening, Shatushka!" Mlle. Lebyadkin said affably.

"I've brought you a guest, Marya Timofeevna," said Shatov.

"Honor to the guest, then. I don't know who it is you've brought, I don't seem to remember this one." She looked at me attentively from behind the candle and at once turned to Shatov again (and concerned herself no further with me during the whole conversation, as if I were not there beside her).

"Got bored, did you, pacing your little garret alone?" she laughed, revealing two rows of excellent teeth.

"Got bored, and I also wanted to come and see you."

Shatov moved a bench up to the table, sat down, and sat me down beside him.

"I'm always glad for some talk, only you make me laugh anyhow, Shatushka, you're so like a monk. When did you last comb your hair?

Let me comb it again," she took a comb from her pocket, "you must not have touched it since I combed it that other time."

"But I don't even have a comb," laughed Shatov.

"Really? Then I'll give you mine, not this one, but another, only remind me to do it."

She began combing his hair with a most serious expression, even parted it on one side, drew back a little to see if it was good, and then put the comb back in her pocket.

"You know what, Shatushka," she shook her head, "you may be a sensible man, but you're bored. It's strange for me looking at you all, I don't understand how it is that people are bored. Sorrow isn't boredom. I'm of good cheer."

"And with your brother, too?"

"You mean Lebyadkin? He's my lackey. It makes no difference to me whether he's here or not. I shout at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water, Lebyadkin, bring my shoes,' and off he runs. I sin sometimes thinking how funny he is."

"And that's exactly so," Shatov again addressed me aloud and without ceremony, "she treats him just like a lackey; I myself have heard her shouting at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water,' and laughing loudly; the only difference is that he doesn't go running for water, but beats her for it; yet she's not afraid of him in the least. She has some sort of nervous fits almost every day, and they take away her memory, so that after them she forgets everything that's just happened and always gets mixed up about time. You think she remembers how we came in, and maybe she does, but she's certainly changed it all in her own way and takes us for someone other than we are, even if she remembers that I'm Shatushka. It doesn't matter that I'm talking out loud; if the talk isn't addressed to her, she immediately stops listening and immediately plunges into dreaming within herself; precisely plunges. She's an extraordinary dreamer; she sits in one place for eight hours, for a whole day. Here's her roll, she may have taken only one bite of it since morning, and won't finish it until tomorrow. And now she's begun reading the cards..."

"Reading the cards I am, Shatushka, only it comes out wrong somehow," Marya Timofeevna suddenly joined in, catching the last words, and without looking she reached for the roll with her left hand (having probably heard about the roll, too). She finally got hold of it, but after keeping it for a while in her left hand, being distracted by the newly sprung-up conversation, she put it back on the table without noticing, and without having taken a single bite. "It keeps coming out the same: a journey, a wicked man, someone's perfidy, a deathbed, a letter from somewhere, unexpected news—it's all lies, I think. Shatushka, what's your opinion? If people lie, why shouldn't cards lie?" She suddenly mixed up the cards. "It's the same thing I said once to Mother Praskovya, a venerable woman she is, she used to stop by my cell to read the cards, in secret from the mother superior. And she wasn't the only one who stopped by. They'd 'oh' and 'ah,' shake their heads, say one thing and another, and I'd just laugh. 'Mother Praskovya,' I said, 'how are you going to get a letter if it hasn't come for twelve years?' Her daughter's husband took her daughter to Turkey somewhere, and for twelve years there wasn't a word or a peep from her. Only the next day I was sitting in the evening having tea at the mother superior's (and our mother superior is of a princely family), and there was also a lady visitor sitting there, a great dreamer, and some little monk from Athos, ^[59]rather a funny man in my opinion. And just think, Shatushka, that same monk had brought Mother Praskovya a letter from her daughter in Turkey that same morning—there's the knave of diamonds for you—unexpected news! So we're having tea there, and this monk from Athos says to the mother superior: 'Most of all, blessed Mother Superior, the Lord has blessed your convent because you keep such a precious treasure in its depths.' 'What treasure?' the mother superior asked. 'Mother Lizaveta the blessed.' Now, this blessed Lizaveta was set into our convent wall, in a cage seven feet long and five feet high, and for seventeen years she's been sitting there behind the iron bars, winter and summer, in nothing but a hempen shift, and she keeps poking at the shift, at the hempen cloth, all the time, with a straw or some twig, whatever she finds, and she says nothing, and she hasn't combed her hair or washed for seventeen years. In winter they'd push in a sheepskin coat for her, and every day a cup of water and a crust of bread. Pilgrims look, say 'Ahh,' sigh, give money. 'A nice treasure for you,' the mother superior replied (she was angry; she disliked Lizaveta terribly). 'Lizaveta sits there only out of spite, only out of stubbornness, and it is all a sham.' I didn't like that; I myself was thinking then about shutting myself away. 'And in my opinion,' I said, 'God and nature are all the same.' And they all said to me in one voice: 'There now!' The mother superior laughed, whispered something to the lady, called me to her, was ever so nice, and the lady gave me a pink bow, want me to show it to you? And the little monk right away began reading me a lesson, and he spoke so tenderly and humbly, and, it must be, with such intelligence. I sat and listened. 'Did you understand?' he asked. 'No,' I said, 'I didn't understand a thing, and just leave me completely in peace,' I said. So since then they've left me completely in peace, Shatushka. And meanwhile one of our old women, who lived with us under penance for prophesying, ^[60]whispered to me on the way out of church: 'What is the Mother of God, in your view?' 'The great mother,' I answered, 'the hope of the human race.' 'Yes,' she said, 'the Mother of God is our great mother the moist earth, and therein lies a great joy for man. And every earthly sorrow and every earthly tear is a joy for us; and when you have watered the earth under you a foot deep with your tears, then you will at once rejoice over everything. And there will be no more, no more of your grief from then on,' she said, 'and such,' she said, 'is the prophecy.' And this word sank into me then. After that I began to kiss the earth when I prayed, each time I bowed to the ground, I kissed it and wept. And I'll tell you this, Shatushka: there's no harm, no harm in these tears; and even if you have no grief, your tears will flow all the same from joy alone. The tears flow by themselves, that's the truth. I used to go away to the shore of the lake—on the one side is our convent, on the other our Pointed Mountain, for so they've named it—Pointed Mountain. I would go up this mountain, turn my face to the east, fall and press myself to the ground, and weep and weep, and I wouldn't remember how long I'd been weeping, and I wouldn't remember or know anything then. After that I'd get up, turn around, and the sun would be setting, so big, so splendid, so fair—do you like looking at the sun, Shatushka? It's nice, but sad. I'd turn back to the east, and the shadow from our mountain would run like an arrow far out on the lake, thin and long, so long, half a mile out, to the very island in the lake, and it would cut right across that stone island, and as soon as it cut across it, the sun would set altogether, and everything would suddenly die out. Now I, too, would be filled with sorrow, now my memory would come back, I'm afraid of the dark, Shatushka. And most of all I weep for my baby..."