Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Our ladies crowded up to the railing with gay and giggly whispers. The kneeling ones and all the other visitors were pushed aside or screened from view, except for the landowner, who stubbornly kept himself in full view and even grabbed the railing with his hands. Gay and greedily curious eyes turned towards Semyon Yakovlevich, as did lorgnettes, pince-nez, and even opera glasses; Lyamshin at least was observing through opera glasses. Semyon Yakovlevich calmly and lazily glanced around with his small eyes.
"Fairlooks! Fairlooks!" he deigned to utter, in a hoarse bass, with a slight exclamation.
Our people all laughed: "Fairlooks? What does it mean?" But Semyon Yakovlevich lapsed into silence and went on eating his potatoes. At last he wiped his mouth with a napkin and was served tea.
He usually did not take tea alone, but also had it served to his visitors, though by no means to all of them, usually pointing out himself those upon whom happiness would be bestowed. His instructions were always striking in their unexpectedness. He sometimes passed over rich men and dignitaries and ordered tea served to some peasant or some decrepit little lady; at other times he would pass over the beggarly folk and serve some one fat, wealthy merchant. The way the tea was served also varied: some got it with sugar in it, others with sugar on the side, still others with no sugar at all. This time happiness was bestowed upon the little monk in the form of a glass of tea with sugar in it, and on the old pilgrim, who was served tea without any sugar. But the fat monk with the tin cup from the monastery was for some reason not served at all, though up to then he had had his glass every day.
"Semyon Yakovlevich, say something to me, I've desired to make your acquaintance for so long," the magnificent lady from our carriage sang out, smiling and narrowing her eyes, the same lady who had observed earlier that there was no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long as it was diverting. Semyon Yakovlevich did not even glance at her. The kneeling landowner sighed audibly and deeply, like a big bellows going up and down.
"With sugar in it!" Semyon Yakovlevich pointed suddenly to the hundred-thousand-rouble merchant; the man came forward and stood beside the landowner.
"More sugar for him!" Semyon Yakovlevich ordered, when the glass had already been poured. They added another helping. "More, more for him!" More was added a third time, and then finally a fourth. The merchant unobjectingly began to drink his syrup.
"Lord!" people whispered and crossed themselves. The landowner again sighed audibly and deeply.
"My father! Semyon Yakovlevich!" the voice of the woebegone lady, who had been pressed back against the wall by our people, suddenly rang out, a rueful voice, but so sharp one would scarcely have expected it. "For a whole hour, my dear, I have been waiting for your grace. Speak your word to me, an orphan, make your judgment."
"Ask her," Semyon Yakovlevich made a sign to the servant-beadle. He went up to the railing.
"Did you do what Semyon Yakovlevich told you last time?" he asked the widow in a soft and even voice.
"Really, father Semyon Yakovlevich, how could I, how could I do it with such people!" the widow wailed. "The cannibals, they're filing a petition against me in the district court, they're threatening to go to the Senate [119]—against their own mother! ..."
"Give it to her!" Semyon Yakovlevich pointed to a sugarloaf. The lad sprang over, seized the loaf, and lugged it to the widow.
"Oh, father, great is your mercy. What am I to do with so much?" the poor widow began to wail.
"More, more!" Semyon Yakovlevich bestowed.
Another loaf was lugged over. "More, more," the blessed man ordered; a third and finally a fourth loaf was brought. The poor widow was surrounded on all sides with sugar. The monk from the monastery sighed: it all might have gone to the monastery that same day, as previous instances had shown.
"But what shall I do with so much?" the poor widow kept sighing obsequiously. "By myself I'll just get sick! ... Isn't it some prophecy, father?"
"That's it, a prophecy!" someone said in the crowd.
"Another pound, another!" Semyon Yakovlevich would not let up.
There was one whole sugarloaf left on the table, but Semyon Yakovlevich had indicated a pound, and so the widow was given a pound.
"Lord, lord!" people sighed and crossed themselves. "A visible prophecy."
"Sweeten your heart beforehand with kindness and mercy, and then come to complain against your own children, bone of your bone—that, one may suppose, is what this emblem signifies," the fat but tea-bypassed monk from the monastery said softly but smugly, in a fit of wounded vanity, taking the interpretation upon himself.
"But really, father," the poor widow suddenly snarled, "they dragged me into the fire on a rope when the Verkhishins' place burned down. They put a dead cat in my trunk—I mean, no matter what the atrocity, they're ready..."
"Out, out!" Semyon Yakovlevich suddenly waved his arms.
The beadle and the lad burst from behind the railing. The beadle took the widow under the arm, and she, having quieted down, trailed to the door, glancing at the awarded sugarloaves which the lad dragged after her.
"One back, take one back!" Semyon Yakovlevich ordered the shop foreman, who had stayed by him. He rushed after the departing group, and all three servants returned shortly bringing the once given and now retrieved sugarloaf; the widow, however, went off with three.
"Semyon Yakovlevich," someone's voice came from the back, just by the door, "I saw a bird in a dream, a jackdaw, he flew out of water and into fire. What is the meaning of this dream?" [120]
"Frost," said Semyon Yakovlevich.
"Semyon Yakovlevich, why won't you answer me anything, I've been interested in you for so long," our lady tried to start again.
"Ask!" Semyon Yakovlevich, not listening to her, suddenly pointed to the kneeling landowner.
The monk from the monastery, who had been ordered to ask, gravely approached the landowner.
"What is your sin? And were you told to do anything?"
"Not to fight, not to be so quick-fisted," the landowner replied hoarsely.
"Have you done it?" asked the monk.
"I can't, my own strength overpowers me."
"Out, out! The broom, use the broom!" Semyon Yakovlevich was waving his arms. The landowner, without waiting to be punished, jumped up and rushed from the room.
"He left a gold piece behind," the monk declared, picking up a florin from the floor.
"To that one!" Semyon Yakovlevich jabbed his finger towards the hundred-thousand-rouble merchant. The hundred-thousand-rouble merchant did not dare refuse, and took it.
"Gold to gold," the monk from the monastery could not help himself.
"To that one, with sugar in it," Semyon Yakovlevich pointed to Mavriky Nikolaevich. The servant poured tea and offered it by mistake to the fop in the pince-nez.
"To the long one, the long one," Semyon Yakovlevich corrected.
Mavriky Nikolaevich took the glass, gave a military half-bow, and began to drink. I do not know why, but our people all rocked with laughter.
"Mavriky Nikolaevich," Liza suddenly addressed him, "that gentleman on his knees has left, go and kneel in his place."
Mavriky Nikolaevich looked at her in perplexity.
"I beg you, it will give me the greatest pleasure. Listen, Mavriky Nikolaevich," she suddenly began in an insistent, stubborn, ardent patter, "you absolutely must kneel, I absolutely want to see you kneeling. If you won't kneel, don't even come to call on me. I absolutely insist, absolutely! ..."
I do not know what she meant by it; but she demanded insistently, implacably, as if she were having a fit. Mavriky Nikolaevich, as we shall see further on, attributed these capricious impulses in her, especially frequent of late, to outbursts of blind hatred for him, not really from malice—on the contrary, she honored, loved, and respected him, and he knew it himself—but from some special, unconscious hatred which, at moments, she was utterly unable to control.
He silently handed his cup to some little old lady standing behind him, opened the gate in the railing, stepped uninvited into Semyon Yakovlevich's private side, and knelt in the middle of the room, in view of everyone. I think he was deeply shaken in his delicate and simple soul by Liza's coarse, jeering escapade in view of the whole company. Perhaps he thought she would be ashamed of herself on seeing his humiliation, which she had so insisted on. Of course, no one but he would venture to reform a woman in such a naïve and risky way. He knelt there with his look of imperturbable gravity, long, awkward, ridiculous. But our people were not laughing; the unexpectedness of the act produced a painful effect. Everyone looked at Liza.
"Unction, unction!" muttered Semyon Yakovlevich.
Liza suddenly went pale, cried out, gasped, and rushed behind the railing. There a quick, hysterical scene took place: with all her might she began lifting Mavriky Nikolaevich from his knees, pulling at his elbow with both hands.
"Get up, get up!" she kept crying out, as if beside herself. "Get up now, now! How dared you kneel?"
Mavriky Nikolaevich rose from his knees. She gripped his arms above the elbows and stared fixedly in his face. There was fear in her eyes.
"Fairlooks! Fairlooks!" Semyon Yakovlevich repeated again.
She finally pulled Mavriky Nikolaevich back outside the railing; a great stir went through our whole crowd. The lady from our carriage, probably wishing to dispel the impression, inquired of Semyon Yakovlevich a third time, in a ringing and shrill voice, and, as before, with a coy smile:
"Now, Semyon Yakovlevich, won't you 'utter' something for me as well? I was counting on you so."
"F– you, f– you!" Semyon Yakovlevich, turning to her, suddenly used an extremely unprintable little word. The phrase was spoken ferociously and with horrifying distinctness. Our ladies shrieked and rushed out headlong, the gentlemen burst into Homeric laughter. And that was the end of our visit to Semyon Yakovlevich.
And yet it was at this point, they say, that another extremely mysterious event took place, and, I confess, it was rather for the sake of it that I have referred to this visit in such detail.
They say that when everyone trooped out, Liza, supported by Mavriky Nikolaevich, suddenly, in the doorway, in the crowd, ran into Nikolai Vsevolodovich. It should be mentioned that since that Sunday morning and the swoon, though the two had met more than once, they had not approached each other or exchanged a single word. I saw them run into each other in the doorway: it seemed to me that they stopped for a moment and looked at each other somehow strangely. But it is possible that I did not see very well in the crowd. It was asserted, on the contrary, and quite seriously, that Liza, having looked at Nikolai Vsevolodovich, quickly raised her hand, right up to the level of his face, and would certainly have struck him if he had not managed to draw back. Perhaps she did not like the expression on his face or some smirk of his, especially then, after such an episode with Mavriky Nikolaevich. I confess I did not see anything, but on the other hand everyone asserted that they did see it, though certainly not everyone could have seen it in that turmoil, even if some did. Only I did not believe it at the time. I remember, however, that for the whole way back Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked somewhat pale.
III
Almost at the same time, and precisely on the very same day, there at last took place the meeting between Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Petrovna, which she had long had in mind and had long since announced to her former friend, but for some reason kept putting off. It took place at Skvoreshniki. Varvara Petrovna arrived at her country house all abustle: it had finally been determined the day before that the forthcoming fête would be given at the house of the marshal's wife. But Varvara Petrovna, with her quick mind, saw at once that no one could prevent her, after the fête, from giving a separate fête of her own, this time at Skvoreshniki, and again inviting the whole town out. Then everyone could satisfy themselves as to whose house was better, and who knew better how to receive and how to give a ball with greater taste. Generally, it was hard to recognize her. She seemed transformed and changed from the former inaccessible "high lady" (Stepan Trofimovich's expression) into a most ordinary featherbrained society woman. However, it may only have seemed so.
Having arrived at the empty house, she made the round of the rooms accompanied by the faithful and ancient Alexei Yegorovich and Fomushka, a man who had seen the world and was an expert in interior decoration. Counsels and considerations began: what furniture to transfer from the town house; what objects, paintings; where to put them; how best to manage with the conservatory and the flowers; where to hang new draperies, where to set up the buffet, one buffet or two, and so on and so forth. And then, in the heat of the bustle, she suddenly decided to send the carriage for Stepan Trofimovich.
The latter had long since been informed, and was prepared, and was every day expecting precisely such a sudden invitation. As he got into the carriage, he crossed himself; his fate was to be decided. He found his friend in the great hall, on a small settee in a niche, by a small marble table, with a pencil and paper in her hands: Fomushka was measuring the height of the galleries and windows, and Varvara Petrovna herself was writing down the numbers and making marginal notes. Without interrupting her work, she nodded her head in Stepan Trofimovich's direction and, when he muttered some greeting, hastily gave him her hand and pointed, without looking, to the place beside her.
"I sat and waited for about five minutes, 'repressing my heart,’” he told me later. "The woman I saw was not the one I had known for twenty years. The fullest conviction that all was over gave me a strength that amazed even her. I swear she was surprised by my steadfastness in that final hour."
Varvara Petrovna suddenly put her pencil down on the table and quickly turned to Stepan Trofimovich.
"Stepan Trofimovich, we must talk business. I'm sure you have prepared all your magnificent words and various little phrases, but it would be better if we got straight to business, right?"
He flinched. She was in too much of a hurry to set her tone—what would come next?
"Wait, keep still, let me speak, then you can, though I really don't know what you'd be able to say in reply," she went on in a quick patter. "The twelve hundred of your pension I regard as my sacred duty as long as you live; or, why a sacred duty, simply an agreement, that will be much more real, right? If you like, we can put it in writing. In case of my death, special arrangements have been made. But, beyond that, you now get lodgings, servants, and your full keep from me. Translated into money, that makes fifteen hundred roubles, right? I will add another three hundred roubles for emergencies, that makes it a full three thousand. Will that suffice you for a year? Doesn't seem too little? In extreme emergencies I'll add to it, however. So, take the money, send me back my servants, and live on your own, wherever you like, in Petersburg, in Moscow, abroad, or here, only not with me. Understand?"
"Not long ago a different demand was conveyed to me by those same lips just as urgently and as quickly," Stepan Trofimovich said slowly and with sad distinctness. "I resigned myself and... danced the little Cossack [121]to please you. Oui, la comparaison peut être permise. C'était un petit cosaque du Don, qui sautait sur sa propre tombe. [xcii] Now..."
"Stop, Stepan Trofimovich. You are terribly verbose. You did not dance, but you came out to me in a new tie and shirt, wearing gloves, pomaded and perfumed. I assure you that you yourself would have liked very much to marry; it was written on your face, and, believe me, the expression was a most inelegant one. If I did not remark upon it then and there, it was solely out of delicacy. But you wished it, you wished to marry, despite the abominations you wrote privately about me and about your bride. Now it's not that at all. And what do you mean by a cosaque du Donon some grave of yours? I don't understand the comparison. On the contrary, don't die but live, live as much as you can, I shall be very glad."
"In the almshouse?"
"In the almshouse? One doesn't go to the almshouse with an income of three thousand. Ah, I remember," she grinned. "Indeed, Pyotr Stepanovich once got to joking about the almshouse. Bah, but that was indeed a special almshouse, which is worth considering. It's for the most respectable persons, there are colonels there, one general even wants to go there. If you got in there with all your money, you'd find peace, satisfaction, servants. You could occupy yourself with your studies and always get up a game of preference ..."
"Passons.”
"Passons?"Varvara Petrovna winced. "But, in that case, that's all; you've been informed; from now on we live entirely separately."
"And that's all? All that's left of twenty years? Our final farewell?"
"You're terribly fond of exclaiming, Stepan Trofimovich. It's not at all the fashion nowadays. They talk crudely but plainly. You and these twenty years of ours! Twenty years of reciprocal self-love, and nothing more. Your every letter to me was written not for me but for posterity. You're a stylist, not a friend, and friendship is merely a glorified word, essentially a mutual outpouring of slops..."
"God, all in other people's words! Learned by rote! So they've already put their uniform on you, too! You, too, are in joy, you, too, are in the sun; chère, chère,for what mess of pottage [122]have you sold them your freedom!"
"I am not a parrot to repeat other people's words," Varvara Petrovna boiled up. "Rest assured that I've stored up enough words of my own. What did you do for me in these twenty years? You denied me even the books which I ordered for you and which, if it weren't for the binder, would have been left uncut. What did you give me to read when I asked you, in the first years, to be my guide? Capefigue, nothing but Capefigue. [123]You were even jealous of my development, and took measures. And meanwhile everyone laughs at you. I confess I've always regarded you as merely a critic, you are a literary critic, and that is all. When I announced, on the way to Petersburg, thatI intended to publish a magazine and dedicate my whole life to it, you at once gave me an ironic look and suddenly became terribly haughty."
"It was not that, not that ... we were afraid of persecutions then..."
"It was just that, and you could by no means have been afraid of persecutions in Petersburg. Remember how afterwards, in February, when the news swept over, [124]you suddenly came running to me all in a fright and started demanding that I at once give you a certificate, in the form of a letter, that the proposed magazine had no relation to you at all, that the young people had come to see me and not you, that you were only a tutor who lived in the house because you were still owed some salary, right? Do you remember that? You have distinguished yourself superbly throughout your life, Stepan Trofimovich."
"That was only a moment of faintheartedness, an intimate moment," he exclaimed ruefully. "But can it be, can it really be that we will break up because of such petty impressions? Can it be that nothing else has been preserved between us from all those long years?"
"You are terribly calculating; you keep wanting to make it so that I am still indebted to you. When you returned from abroad, you looked down your nose at me and wouldn't let me utter a word, and when I myself came and spoke with you later about my impressions of the Madonna, you wouldn't hear me out and began smiling haughtily into your tie, as if I really could not have the same feelings as you."
"It was not that, probably not that... J'ai oublié." [xciii]
"No, it was just that, and there was nothing to boast of before me, because it's all nonsense and merely your invention. No one, no one nowadays admires the Madonna anymore or wastes time over it, except for inveterate old men. This has been proved."
"Proved, really?"
"She serves absolutely no purpose. This mug is useful, because water can be poured into it; this pencil is useful, because everything can be written with it, but here you have a woman's face that's worse than all faces in nature. Try painting an apple and put a real apple next to it—which would you take? I'll bet you wouldn't make any mistake.
This is what your theories boil down to, once the first ray of free analysis shines on them." [125]
"So, so."
"You grin ironically. And what you said to me about charity, for example? And yet the pleasure of charity is an arrogant and immoral pleasure, a rich man's pleasure in his riches, his power, and in the comparison of his significance with the significance of a beggar. Charity corrupts both him who gives and him who takes, and, moreover, does not achieve its goal, because it only increases beggary. Sluggards who do not want to work crowd around those who give like gamblers around the gaming table, hoping to win. And yet the pitiful half-kopecks that are thrown to them are not even a hundredth part enough. How much have you given in your life? Eighty kopecks, if that, go on, use your memory. Try to remember when was the last time you gave anything—about two years ago, maybe all of four. You shout and it only hinders the cause. Charity should be forbidden by law, even in our present society. In the new order there will be no poor at all."
"Oh, what an outpouring of other people's words! So it's even gone as far as the new order? God help you, unhappy woman!"
"Yes, it has, Stepan Trofimovich; you carefully concealed from me all the new ideas that are now known to everyone, and you were doing it solely out of jealousy, so as to have more power over me. Now even this Yulia is a hundred miles ahead of me. But I, too, have now opened my eyes. I've defended you, Stepan Trofimovich, as far as I could; absolutely everyone accuses you."
"Enough!" he made as if to get up from his seat, "enough! And what else shall I wish you, if not indeed repentance?"
"Sit down for a minute, Stepan Trofimovich, there is still something I want to ask you. You have received an invitation to read at the literary matinée; that was arranged through me. Tell me, what precisely will you read?"
"Why, precisely about that queen of queens, that ideal of humanity, the Sistine Madonna, who in your opinion is not worth a glass or a pencil."
"Not from history, then?" Varvara Petrovna was ruefully surprised. "But they won't listen to you. You and your Madonna, really! Who wants it, if you just put everyone to sleep? I assure you, Stepan Trofimovich, I am speaking solely in your interest. How different if you'd take some brief but amusing little medieval court story from Spanish history, or, better, some anecdote, and pad it out with more anecdotes and witticisms of your own. They had magnificent courts there; there were such ladies, poisonings. Karmazinov says it would be strange if you couldn't at least find something amusing from Spanish history."
"Karmazinov, that written-out fool, hunts up a topic for me!"
"Karmazinov, that all but statesmanly mind! You have too bold a tongue, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Your Karmazinov is a written-out, spiteful old woman! Chère, chère,how long have you been so enslaved by them, oh, God!"
"I still cannot stand him for his self-importance, but I do justice to his intelligence. I repeat, I've defended you with all my strength, as far as I could. And why must you so necessarily show yourself as ridiculous and dull? On the contrary, come out on the stage with a venerable smile, as the representative of a past age, and tell three anecdotes, with all your wittiness, as only you sometimes know how to do. So you're an old man, so you belong to a bygone age, so you've fallen behind them, finally; but you can confess all that with a smile in your preface, and everyone will see that you are a dear, kind, witty relic ... In short, a man of the old stamp, and sufficiently advanced to be able to set the right value on all the scandalousness of certain notions he used to follow. Do give me that pleasure, I beg you."
"Chère,enough! Don't beg me, I cannot. I will read about the Madonna, but I will raise a storm that will either crush them all, or strike me alone."
"Most likely you alone, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Such is my lot. I will tell of that mean slave, that stinking and depraved lackey, who will be the first to clamber up a ladder with scissors in his hand and slash the divine face of the great ideal in the name of equality, envy, and... digestion. Let my curse thunder out, and then, then..."
"To the madhouse?"
"Perhaps. But in any case, whether I emerge defeated or victorious, that same evening I shall take my bag, my beggar's bag, leave all my belongings, all your presents, all pensions and promises of boons to come, and go off on foot to end my life as a merchant's tutor, or die of hunger somewhere in a ditch. I have spoken. Alea jacta est!" [126]
He again rose slightly.
"I've been sure," Varvara Petrovna rose, flashing her eyes, "for years I've been sure that you lived precisely so that in the end you might disgrace me and my house with slander! What do you mean to say by this tutoring in a merchant's house or dying in a ditch? Spite, slander, and nothing more!"
"You have always despised me; but I will end as a knight faithful to his lady, for your opinion has always been dearest of all to me. From this minute I shall accept nothing, but revere disinterestedly."
"How stupid that is!"
"You have always not respected me. I may have had a myriad of weaknesses. Yes, I was grubbing off you—I speak the language of nihilism—but grubbing was never the highest principle of my actions. It happened just so, of itself, I don't know how ... I always thought that something else remained between us, higher than food, and– never, never have I been a scoundrel! And so, on our way, to set things right! A late way, for it is late autumn outside, mist lies over the fields, the chill hoarfrost of old age covers my future path, and wind howls about the imminent grave... But on our way, our new way:
Filled with love that's pure
And true to the sweet dream... [127]
Oh, my dreams, farewell! Twenty years! Alea jacta est!"
His face was splashed with the tears that suddenly burst through; he took his hat.
"I don't understand Latin," said Varvara Petrovna, holding herself back with all her might.
Who knows, perhaps she also wanted to cry, but indignation and caprice once again got the upper hand.
"I know only one thing, that this is all pranks. You will never be able to carry out your threats, so filled with egoism. You will not go anywhere, not to any merchant, but will end up quite contentedly on my hands, getting a pension and holding Tuesday gatherings of your friends, who bear no resemblance to anything. Farewell, Stepan Trofimovich."
" Alea jacta est!"he bowed deeply to her and returned home half dead with agitation.
