Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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"Bah, but now I, too, understand it all!" Pyotr Stepanovich slapped himself on the forehead. "But... but in that case what position have I been put in? Darya Pavlovna, please forgive me! ... What have you done to me in that case, eh?" he turned to his father.
"Pierre, you might express yourself differently with me, is that not so, my friend?" Stepan Trofimovich said, even quite softly.
"Don't shout, please," Pierre waved his hands, "believe me, it's all your old, sick nerves, and it won't help anything if you shout. Better tell me, couldn't you have supposed I'd start speaking the moment I came in? How could you not warn me?"
Stepan Trofimovich gave him a searching look.
"Pierre, you know so much about what is going on here, how can it be that you really didn't know anything, that you hadn't heard anything?"
"Wha-a-at? Such people! So we're not only an old child, but a wicked child as well? Varvara Petrovna, did you hear what he said?"
A hubbub ensued; but suddenly an incident broke out which no one could have expected.
VIII
First of all I will mention that during the last two or three minutes some new emotion had taken possession of Lizaveta Nikolaevna; she was quickly whispering something to her maman and to Mavriky Nikolaevich, who was bending down to her. Her face was anxious, but at the same time had a look of determination. Finally, she rose from her seat, obviously hurrying to leave and hurrying her maman, whom Mavriky Nikolaevich began helping up from her chair. But clearly they were not fated to leave without seeing everything to the end.
Shatov, who had been completely forgotten by all in his corner (not far from Lizaveta Nikolaevna), and who apparently did not know himself why he was sitting there and would not go away, suddenly rose from his chair and walked across the entire room, with unhurried but firm steps, towards Nikolai Vsevolodovich, looking him straight in the face. The latter noticed him approaching from afar and grinned slightly; but when Shatov came up close to him, he ceased grinning.
When Shatov stopped silently in front of him, without taking his eyes off him, everyone suddenly noticed it and became hushed, Pyotr Stepanovich last of all; Liza and her maman stopped in the middle of the room. Thus about five seconds went by; the expression of bold perplexity on Nikolai Vsevolodovich's face turned to wrath, he frowned, and suddenly...
And suddenly Shatov swung his long, heavy arm and hit him in the face with all his might. Nikolai Vsevolodovich swayed badly on his feet.
Shatov hit him even somehow peculiarly, not at all as people ordinarily slap someone in the face (if it is possible to put it so), not with his palm, but with his whole fist, and his was a big, heavy, bony fist, covered with red hair and freckles. If he had hit the nose, he would have broken it. But the blow landed on the cheek, touching the left corner of the lip and the upper teeth, which immediately started to bleed.
I think there was a momentary cry, perhaps Varvara Petrovna cried out—I do not recall, because everything at once froze again, as it were. In any case, the whole scene lasted no more than some ten seconds.
Nevertheless, terribly much happened in those ten seconds.
I will remind the reader once more that Nikolai Vsevolodovich was one of those natures that knows no fear. In a duel he would stand cold-bloodedly before his adversary's fire, take aim himself, and kill with brutal calm. If anyone had slapped him in the face then, I think he would not even have challenged the offender to a duel, but would have killed him at once, on the spot; he was precisely that sort, and would kill with full awareness and not at all in rage. I even think that he never knew those blinding fits of wrath that make one unable to reason. For all the boundless anger that would occasionally take possession of him, he was always able to preserve complete self-control, and therefore to realize that for killing someone otherwise than in a duel he would certainly be sent to hard labor; nevertheless, he would still have killed the offender, and that without the slightest hesitation.
I have been studying Nikolai Vsevolodovich all this recent time, and, owing to special circumstances, I know a great many facts about him as I now write. I might perhaps compare him with some past gentlemen, of whom certain legendary memories are still preserved in our society. It was told, for example, of the Decembrist L–n, [74]that all his life he deliberately courted danger, reveled in the sensation of it, turned it into a necessity of his nature; when young he would fight duels over nothing; in Siberia he would go against a bear armed only with a knife, liked meeting up with escaped convicts in the Siberian forests—and they, I will note in passing, are more dangerous than any bear. There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen were capable of experiencing, even to an intense degree, the sensation of fear– otherwise they would have been much calmer, and would not have made the sense of danger into a necessity of their nature. No, but overcoming their own cowardice—that, of course, was what tempted them. A ceaseless reveling in victory and the awareness that no one can be victorious over you—that was what attracted them. Even before his exile, this L–n had struggled with starvation for some time and earned his bread by hard work, solely because he absolutely refused to submit to the demands of his rich father, which he found unjust. His understanding of struggle was thus many-sided; he valued his own staunchness and strength of character not only with bears or in duels.
However, since then many years have passed, and the nervous, tormented, and divided nature of people in our time no longer even admits of the need for those direct and integral sensations which were once so sought after by certain gentlemen of the good old days in their restless activity. Nikolai Vsevolodovich would perhaps have looked down on L–n, would even have called him an eternally strutting coward, a cock—though, true, he would not have expressed it aloud. He would shoot his adversary in a duel, and go against a bear if need be, and fight off a robber in the forest—all as successfully and fearlessly as L–n, yet without any sense of enjoyment, but solely out of unpleasant necessity, listlessly, lazily, even with boredom. Anger, of course, constituted a progress over L–n, even over Lermontov. [75]
There was perhaps more anger in Nikolai Vsevolodovich than in those two together, but this anger was cold, calm, and, if one may put it so, reasonable,and therefore the most repulsive and terrible that can be. I repeat once more: I considered him then and consider him still (now that everything is over) to be precisely the sort of man who, if he received a blow in the face or some equivalent offense, would immediately kill his adversary, right there on the spot, and without any challenge to a duel.
And yet, in the present case, something different and wondrous occurred.
As soon as he straightened up, after having swayed so disgracefully to one side, almost as much as half his height, from the slap he had received, and before the mean, somehow as if wet, sound of a fist hitting a face seemed to have faded away in the room, he immediately seized Shatov by the shoulders with both hands; but immediately, at almost the same moment, he jerked both hands back and clasped them behind him. He said nothing, looked at Shatov, and turned pale as a shirt. But, strangely, his eyes seemed to be dying out. Ten seconds later his look was cold and—I'm convinced I'm not lying—calm. Only he was terribly pale. Of course, I do not know what was inside the man, I only saw the outside. It seems to me that if there were such a man, for example, as would seize a red-hot bar of iron and clutch it in his hand, with the purpose of measuring his strength of mind, and in the course of ten seconds would be overcoming the intolerable pain and would finally overcome it, this man, it seems to me, would endure something like what was experienced now, in these ten seconds, by Nikolai Vsevolodovich.
The first to lower his eyes was Shatov, obviously because he was forced to lower them. Then he slowly turned and walked out of the room, but not at all with the same gait as he had just had when approaching. He was walking softly, his shoulders hunched up somehow especially awkwardly, his head bowed, and as if he were reasoning something out with himself. He seemed to be whispering something. He made his way carefully to the door, without brushing against anything or knocking anything over, and he opened the door only a very little way, so as to be able to squeeze through the crack almost sideways. As he was squeezing through, the lock of hair standing up at the back of his head was especially noticeable.
Then, before all cries there came one terrible cry. I saw Lizaveta Nikolaevna seize her maman by the shoulder and Mavriky Nikolaevich by the hand and pull them two or three times, drawing them out of the room, but suddenly she cried out and fell full-length on the floor in a swoon. To this day it is as if I can still hear the back of her head hit the carpet.
Part Two
1: Night
I
Eight days passed. Now, when everything is past and I am writing my chronicle, we know what it was all about; but then we still knew nothing, and, naturally, various things seemed strange to us. Stepan Trofimovich and I, at least, first locked ourselves in and watched timorously from afar. Though I did go out here and there as before and bring him all sorts of news, without which he could not even exist.
Needless to say, the most diverse rumors spread around town—that is, concerning the slap, Lizaveta Nikolaevna's swoon, and the rest of what happened that Sunday. The surprising thing for us was: through whom could it all have come out so quickly and accurately? None of the persons then present would seem to have found any need or profit in breaking the secrecy of what had happened. No servants had been there; Lebyadkin alone might have blabbed something, not so much from malice, because he had left then in great fright (and fear of an enemy destroys any malice against him), but solely from lack of restraint. But Lebyadkin, together with his sister, disappeared without a trace the very next day; he was not in Filippov's house, he had moved to some unknown place, as if he had vanished. Shatov, of whom I wanted to inquire about Marya Timofeevna, locked himself in and, it seems, spent all those eight days sitting in his apartment, and even stopped his lessons in town. He would not receive me. I came to see him on Tuesday and knocked at the door. There was no answer, but being convinced by indubitable evidence that he was at home, I knocked once more. Then he, evidently having jumped off the bed, came up to the door with big strides and shouted to me at the top of his lungs: "Shatov's not home." With that I left.
Stepan Trofimovich and I, not without fearing for the boldness of such a suggestion, but mutually encouraging each other, finally arrived at this thought: we decided that the one and only person who could be to blame for spreading the rumors was Pyotr Stepanovich, though sometime later, in a conversation with his father, he himself asserted that he had found the story already on everyone's lips, predominantly at the club, and perfectly known in the smallest detail to the governor's wife and her husband. Another remarkable thing: on the very next day, Monday evening, I met Liputin and he already knew everything to the last word, which meant that he had doubtless been one of the first to find out.
Many of the ladies (and of the best society) were also curious about the "mysterious lame girl"—as they called Marya Timofeevna. There were some who even insisted on seeing her in person and making her acquaintance, so that those gentlemen who had hastened to tuck the Lebyadkins away had obviously acted opportunely. But in the forefront still stood Lizaveta Nikolaevna's swoon, and "all society" was interested in that, if only because the matter directly concerned Yulia Mikhailovna, as Lizaveta Nikolaevna's relation and patroness. And the chattering that went on! The mysteriousness of the situation was conducive to chatter: both homes were shut tight; Lizaveta Nikolaevna was said to be lying in brain fever; the same was also asserted of Nikolai Vsevolodovich, with repugnant details about a tooth that had supposedly been knocked out and a swollen cheek. In some little corners it was even said that there would perhaps be a murder, that Stavrogin was not a man to bear with such an offense, and that he would kill Shatov, but secretly, as in a Corsican vendetta. This idea was liked; but the majority of our young society people listened to it all with disdain and an air of the most scornful indifference—assumed, of course. In general, the ancient hostility of our society towards Nikolai Vsevolodovich was markedly evident. Even the most solid people were eager to accuse him, though they themselves did not know of what. It was whispered that he had supposedly ruined Lizaveta Nikolaevna's honor, and that there had been an affair between them in Switzerland. Of course, cautious people restrained themselves, and yet everyone listened with appetite. There was talk of other sorts, not general but private, rare, and almost covert– extremely strange talk, the existence of which I mention just to warn the reader, solely with a view to further events in my story. Namely: some said, frowningly and God knows on what grounds, that Nikolai Vsevolodovich had some special business in our province, that in Petersburg, through Count K., he had entered into certain high relations, that he was perhaps even in government service and had been all but entrusted with some mission by someone. When very solid and restrained people smiled at this rumor, observing reasonably that a man who lived by scandals and had begun among us with a swollen jaw did not look like an official, it was observed to them in a whisper that he was serving not quite officially but, so to speak, confidentially, in which case the service itself required that the servant look as little as possible like an official. This observation produced its effect; it was known among us that the zemstvo [76]of our province was looked upon with somewhat special attention in the capital. I repeat, these rumors only flashed and then disappeared without a trace, for a time, at Nikolai Vsevolodovich's first appearance; yet I will note that the cause of many of these rumors was in part several brief but spiteful remarks uttered vaguely and abruptly in the club by Artemy Pavlovich Gaganov, a retired captain of the Guard, recently returned from Petersburg, a rather big landowner of our province and district, a man of society in the capital, and son of the late Pavel Pavlovich Gaganov, that same venerable senior member with whom, over four years before, Nikolai Vsevolodovich had had a confrontation remarkable for its rudeness and suddenness, which I have already mentioned above, at the beginning of my story.
It immediately became known to everyone that Yulia Mikhailovna had paid an extraordinary visit to Varvara Petrovna, and that it had been announced to her on the porch that "the mistress was ill and not receiving." Also that two days or so after her visit, Yulia Mikhailovna sent a messenger to inquire about Varvara Petrovna's health. Finally, she started "defending" Varvara Petrovna everywhere, of course only in the loftiest—that is, the vaguest possible—sense. To all the first hasty hints about Sunday's story she had listened sternly and coldly, so that in the following days they were not renewed in her presence. And thus the idea came to be held everywhere that Yulia Mikhailovna knew not only the whole mysterious story but also its whole mysterious meaning in the minutest detail, and not as an outsider but as a participant. I will observe, incidentally, that she had already begun little by little to acquire that lofty influence among us which she was so undoubtedly striving and thirsting for, and she was already beginning to see herself "surrounded." Part of society acknowledged her as having practical sense and tact... but of that later. Her patronage also partly explained Pyotr Stepanovich's rather rapid success in our society—a success which at the time particularly struck Stepan Trofimovich.
Perhaps we were both exaggerating. First of all, Pyotr Stepanovich became acquainted with the whole town almost instantly, in the first four days after his appearance. He appeared on Sunday, and already on Tuesday I met him in a carriage with Artemy Pavlovich Gaganov, a proud man, irritable and overbearing, despite all his worldly polish, and with whom, owing to his character, it was quite difficult to get along. Pyotr Stepanovich was also very well received at the governor's, so much so that he stepped at once into the position of an intimate or, so to speak, a much favored young man; he dined at Yulia Mikhailovna's almost daily. He had already made her acquaintance in Switzerland, but there was indeed something curious about his rapid success in His Excellency's house. After all, whether it was true or not, he was once reputed to have been a foreign revolutionary, to have participated in some foreign publications and conferences, "which can even be proved from the newspapers," as it was spitefully put in my presence by Alyosha Telyatnikov, now, alas, a retired petty official, but formerly also a much favored young man in the old governor's house. Still, the fact remained that the former revolutionary appeared in his beloved fatherland not only without any trouble, but almost with inducements; so perhaps there was nothing to it. Liputin once whispered to me that, according to rumors, Pyotr Stepanovich had supposedly made his repentance somewhere, and had received absolution, after disclosing a few other names, and had thus perhaps already managed to make good his guilt, also promising to be useful in future to the fatherland. I conveyed this venomous remark to Stepan Trofimovich, and he, though he was almost incapable of reflection, lapsed into deep thought. Later on it was disclosed that Pyotr Stepanovich had come to us with extremely respectable letters of recommendation, at least he had brought one to the governor's wife from an extremely important little old lady of Petersburg, whose husband was one of the most distinguished little old men of Petersburg. This little old lady, Yulia Mikhailovna's godmother, mentioned in her letter that Count K. also knew Pyotr Stepanovich quite well through Nikolai Vsevolodovich, had shown him favor, and found him "a worthy young man, in spite of his former errors." Yulia Mikhailovna valued exceedingly her scant and so difficultly maintained connections with the "high world," and was of course very glad of the important little old lady's letter; but there still remained something peculiar here, as it were. She even put her husband into almost familiar relations with Pyotr Stepanovich, which caused Mr. von Lembke to complain... but of that, too, later. I will observe, too, so as not to forget, that the great writer also treated Pyotr Stepanovich quite benignly and immediately invited him to visit. Such haste on the part of such a self-inflated man stung Stepan Trofimovich most painfully, but I explained it to myself otherwise: in courting a nihilist, [77]Mr. Karmazinov most certainly had in mind his relations with the progressive young men of both capitals. The great writer trembled morbidly before the newest revolutionary young men, and, imagining in his ignorance of the matter that the keys to the Russian future were in their hands, sucked up to them humiliatingly, the more sosince they paid no attention at all to him.
II
Pyotr Stepanovich also ran by a couple of times to see his father, but, to my misfortune, I was absent both times. He visited him for the first time on Wednesday, that is, only on the fourth day after that first meeting, and even then on business. Incidentally, the settling of accounts for the estate was concluded between them in some unseen and unheard way. Varvara Petrovna took it all upon herself and paid for everything, acquiring the little piece of land, to be sure, and Stepan Trofimovich was simply informed that it had all been concluded, and Varvara Petrovna's agent, her valet Alexei Yegorovich, presented him with something to sign, which he proceeded to perform silently and with extreme dignity. Speaking of dignity, I will observe that I hardly recognized our former old man in those days. He behaved as never before, became surprisingly taciturn, did not write even one letter to Varvara Petrovna from that Sunday on, which I would consider a miracle, and, above all, became calm. He had settled upon some final and extraordinary idea which enabled him to be calm, one could see that. He found this idea, sat and waited for something. At first, however, he was sick, especially on Monday—an attack of cholerine. He also could not do without news all that time; but whenever, leaving facts aside, I moved on to the essence of the matter and voiced some suggestions, he would at once begin waving his hands at me to stop. The two meetings with his boy still had a painful effect on him, though they did not sway him. On both days after these meetings he lay on the sofa, his head wrapped in a handkerchief moistened with vinegar; but he continued to remain calm in the lofty sense.
Occasionally, however, he did not wave his hands at me. Occasionally it also seemed to me that the mysterious resoluteness he had acquired was abandoning him, as it were, and that he had begun to struggle with some new, tempting flood of ideas. These were just moments, but I make note of them. I suspected that he wanted very much to come out of seclusion and declare himself, to put up a fight, to wage his last battle.
" Cher,I would crush them!" escaped him on Thursday evening, after the second meeting with Pyotr Stepanovich, as he lay stretched out on the sofa with his head wrapped in a towel.
Until that moment he had not spoken a word to me all day.
“‘ Fils, fils chéri,' and so on—I agree, all these phrases are nonsense, kitchen-maidish vocabulary, but let it be, I see it now myself. I did not give him food and drink, I sent him off from Berlin to – province, a nursling, by mail, well, and so forth. I agree... 'You did not give me drink,' he says, 'and sent me off by mail, and here, on top of that, you've robbed me.' But, wretched man, I cry to him, my heart ached for you all my life, even if it was by mail! Il rit. [lxxvi] But I agree, I agree... say it was by mail," he ended, as if in delirium.
"Passons," he began again five minutes later. "I don't understand Turgenev. His Bazarov is some sort of false character, who doesn't exist at all; they were the first to reject him as having no resemblance to anything. This Bazarov is some vague mixture of Nozdryov and Byron, [78] c'est le mot. [lxxvii] Look at them attentively: they cavort and squeal with joy like puppies in the sun, they're happy, they're the victors! Forget Byron! ... And besides, how mundane! What kitchen-maidish, irritable vanity, what a trite little desire to faire du bruit autour de son nom, [lxxviii] without noticing that son nom...Oh, caricature! For pity's sake, I cry to him, but do you really want to offer yourself to people, just as you are, in place of Christ? Il rit. Il rit beaucoup, il rit trop.His smile is somehow strange. His mother didn't have such a smile. Il rit toujours." [lxxix]
Again there was silence.
"They're cunning; they had it all set up on Sunday ..." he suddenly blurted out.
"Oh, no doubt," I cried, pricking up my ears, "it was all patched together, with the seams showing, and so badly acted."
"I don't mean that. You know, they left the seams showing on purpose, so that it would be noticed by... the right people. Do you understand?"
"No, I don't."
"Tant mieux. [lxxx]Passons. I'm very irritated today."
"But why did you argue with him, Stepan Trofimovich?" I said reproachfully.
"Je voulais convertir. [lxxxi] Laugh, of course, go on. Cette pauvreauntie, elle entendra de belles choses! [lxxxii] Oh, my friend, would you believe, I felt like a patriot today! But, in fact, I've always considered myself a Russian... yes, a true Russian cannot but be like you and me. Il y a là-dedans quelque chose d'aveugle et de louche." [lxxxiii]
"Absolutely," I replied.
"My friend, the real truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so. Perhaps there's something here that we don't understand. What do you think, is there something in this victorious squealing that we don't understand? I wish there was. I do wish it."
I kept my silence. He, too, was silent for a very long time.
"They say that the French mind..." he began babbling suddenly, as if in a fever, "but that's a lie, it has always been so. Why slander the French mind? It's simply Russian laziness, our humiliating impotence to produce an idea, our disgusting parisitism among the nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux, [lxxxiv] and not the French mind. Oh, Russians ought to be exterminated for the good of mankind, like harmful parasites! It was not for that, it was not at all for that that we strove; I don't understand any of it. I've ceased to understand! But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult! Vous êtes des paresseux! Votre drapeau est une guenille, une impuissance. [lxxxv] Those carts—or how does it go?—'the rumble of carts bringing bread to mankind' is more useful than the Sistine Madonna, [79]or however it goes... une bêtise dans ce genre. [lxxxvi] But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness! Il rit.You're tossing off bon mots here, he says, while 'pampering your members on a velvet sofa' (he put it more nastily)... And note our new custom of familiar speech between father and son: it's very well when the two agree, but what if they're quarreling?"
We were silent again for about a minute.
"Cher," he suddenly concluded, rising quickly, "do you know that this will most certainly end with something?"
"That it will," I said.
"Vous ne comprenez pas. [lxxxvii] Passons.But... in this world things usually end with nothing, but here there will be an end, most certainly, most certainly!"
He got up, paced the room in the greatest agitation, and, coming to the sofa again, strengthlessly collapsed on it.
On Friday morning, Pyotr Stepanovich went somewhere in the district and was gone until Monday. I learned of his departure from Liputin, and just then, somehow in conversation, found out from him that the Lebyadkins, brother and sister, were both somewhere across the river, in the potters' quarter. "It was I who took them across," Liputin added, and, dropping the Lebyadkin subject, suddenly declared to me that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was going to marry Mavriky Nikolaevich, and though it had not been announced yet, there had been an engagement and the matter was concluded. The next day I met Lizaveta Nikolaevna on horseback, accompanied by Mavriky Nikolaevich, venturing out for the first time after her illness. She flashed her eyes at me from afar, laughed, and gave me a very friendly nod. All this I conveyed to Stepan Trofimovich; he paid some attention only to the news about the Lebyadkins.
And now, having described our puzzled situation during those eight days, when we still did not know anything, I will set out to describe the subsequent events of my chronicle, this time knowingly, so to speak, as they have now been revealed and explained. I will begin precisely from the eighth day following that Sunday, that is, from Monday evening, because it was essentially from that evening that the "new story" began.
III
It was seven o'clock in the evening, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich was sitting alone in his study—his favorite room from long past, lofty, spread with carpets, filled with somewhat heavy, old-fashioned furniture. He sat in the corner on the sofa, dressed as if to go out, but he did not seem to be going anywhere. On the table before him stood a lamp with a shade. The sides and corners of this big room remained in shadow. His look was pensive and concentrated, not altogether at ease; his face was tired and had grown somewhat thin. He was indeed suffering from a swollen cheek; but the rumor about the knocked-out tooth was exaggerated. The tooth had been loosened, but was now firm again; the lower lip had also been cut inside, but this, too, had healed. It had taken a whole week for the swelling to go down only because he did not want to receive the doctor and have him lance the abscess, but waited until it broke of itself. Not just the doctor, he would scarcely even admit his mother, and then only for a moment, once a day, and inevitably at dusk, when it was already dark but before the lights had been brought in. He did not receive Pyotr Stepanovich either, who nevertheless ran by two or three times a day, while he was still in town, to see Varvara Petrovna. And then at last, on Monday, having returned in the morning from his three-day absence, having run all over town, and having dined at Yulia Mikhailovna's, Pyotr Stepanovich came at last in the evening to Varvara Petrovna, who was awaiting him impatiently. The ban had been lifted, Nikolai Vsevolodovich was receiving. Varvara Petrovna herself led the guest to the door of the study; she had long wanted this meeting, and Pyotr Stepanovich gave her his word that he would run to her from Nicolas and recount it all. She timidly knocked for Nikolai Vsevolodovich and, getting no answer, ventured to open the door a couple of inches.
