Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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"I will never forgive you for that!"
The next day she met her friend as if nothing had happened; she never recalled the incident. But thirteen years later, at a tragic moment, she did recollect it, and she reproached him and became pale in just the same way as thirteen years before, when she had reproached him the first time. Only twice in her whole life did she say to him: "I will never forgive you for that!" The occasion with the baron was already the second occasion; the first occasion, for its part, was so characteristic and, it seems, had such significance in Stepan Trofimovich's destiny, that I am resolved to mention it as well.
It was the year 'fifty-five, in springtime, the month of May, just after news reached Skvoreshniki of the demise of Lieutenant General Stavrogin, a frivolous old man who had died of a stomach disorder on his way to the Crimea, where he was hastening on assignment to active duty. Varvara Petrovna was left a widow and clad herself in deep mourning. True, she could not have grieved very much, because for the last four years she had lived completely separately from her husband, owing to the dissimilarity of their characters, and had provided him with an allowance. (The lieutenant general himself had only a hundred and fifty souls and his salary, along with nobility and connections; all the wealth and Skvoreshniki belonged to Varvara Petrovna, the only daughter of a very rich tax farmer.) Nevertheless, she was shaken by the suddenness of the news and withdrew into complete seclusion. Of course, Stepan Trofimovich never left her side.
May was in full bloom; the evenings were remarkable. The bird cherry was blossoming. The two friends came together in the garden every evening and stayed until nightfall in the gazebo, pouring out their feelings and thoughts to each other. There were poetic moments. Under the effect of the change in her destiny, Varvara Petrovna talked more than usual. She seemed to be clinging to her friend's heart, and so it continued for several evenings. A strange thought suddenly dawned on Stepan Trofimovich: "Is the inconsolable widow not counting on him and expecting a proposal from him at the end of the year of mourning?" A cynical thought; but loftiness of constitution sometimes even fosters an inclination towards cynical thoughts, if only because of the versatility of one's development. He began to go more deeply into it and concluded that it did look that way. "True, it's an immense fortune," he pondered, "but. . ." Indeed, Varvara Petrovna in no way resembled a beauty: she was a tall, yellow, bony woman with an exceedingly long face recalling something horselike. Stepan Trofimovich hesitated more and more; he was tortured by doubts, and even shed a few tears now and then from indecision (he wept rather often). But in the evenings—that is, in the gazebo—his face somehow involuntarily began to express something capricious and mocking, something coquettish and at the same time haughty. This happens somehow inadvertently, involuntarily, and is all the more noticeable the nobler the person is. God knows how to judge here, but most likely nothing was awakening in Varvara Petrovna's heart that could fully have justified Stepan Trofimovich's suspicions. And she would not have exchanged her name of Stavrogin for his name, however glorious it might be. Perhaps it was only a feminine game on her part, the manifestation of an unconscious feminine need, so natural on certain extraordinary feminine occasions. However, I would not vouch for it; inscrutable even to this day are the depths of the feminine heart. But, to continue.
One may suppose that within herself she soon understood the strange expression on her friend's face; she was alert and observant, whereas he was sometimes too innocent. But the evenings went on as before, and the conversations were as poetic and interesting. And then once, as night was falling, after a most animated and poetic conversation, they parted in a friendly manner, warmly shaking hands at the porch of the cottage Stepan Trofimovich occupied. Every summer he moved from the huge manor house of Skvoreshniki to this little cottage which stood almost in the garden. He had just walked into his room and, having taken a cigar, before he managed to light it, troubled by thoughts, had stopped, weary and motionless, by the open window, observing some white clouds, light as down, gliding past the bright crescent moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn around. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was again standing before him. Her yellow face was almost blue, her lips were pressed together and twitched at the corners. For a full ten seconds she looked silently into his eyes with a firm, implacable gaze, and then suddenly whispered rapidly:
"I will never forgive you for that!"
When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovich told me this sad story in a whisper, having locked the door first, he swore he had been so dumbfounded then and there that he had not heard or seen how Varvara Petrovna disappeared. Since she never once alluded afterwards to what had taken place, and everything went on as if nothing had happened, he was inclined all his life to think it was just a hallucination before illness, all the more so as he actually did fall ill that same night for two whole weeks—which, incidentally, also put an end to the meetings in the gazebo.
But despite his fancy about the hallucination, he seemed every day of his life to be waiting for the sequel and, so to speak, the denouement of this event. He did not believe it could have ended just like that! And if so, what strange looks he must sometimes have given his friend.
V
She herself even invented a costume for him, in which he went about all his life. It was an elegant and characteristic costume: a long-skirted black frock coat, buttoned almost to the top, but with a dapper look; a soft hat (a straw one for summer) with a wide brim; a white batiste cravat with a big knot and hanging ends; a cane with a silver knob; and shoulder-length hair to go with it all. His hair was dark brown and only recently had begun to go a bit gray. He shaved his beard and moustache. He was said to have been extremely handsome as a young man. But, in my opinion, as an old man he was also remarkably imposing. And how old is fifty-three? Still, out of a certain civic coquetry, he not only did not try to look younger, but seemed to flaunt the solidity of his years, and in his costume, tall, lean, with hair falling to his shoulders, he resembled a patriarch, as it were, or, more precisely, the portrait of the poet Kukolnik [12]in a lithograph from some edition of the thirties, especially when he sat in the garden in summer, on a bench, under a flowering lilac bush, leaning with both hands on his cane, an open book beside him, poetically pondering the sunset. Speaking of books, I will note that towards the end he began somehow to withdraw from reading. That, however, was towards the very end. The newspapers and magazines Varvara Petrovna subscribed to in great numbers, he read constantly. He was also constantly interested in the successes of Russian literature, though without in the least losing his dignity. At some point he became involved in a study of the higher modern politics of our internal and external affairs, but soon abandoned the enterprise with a wave of the hand. And there was this, too: he would take Tocqueville with him to the garden, but with Paul de Kock tucked in his side pocket.' [13]That, however, is a trifle.
I will also note parenthetically about Kukolnik's portrait, that Varvara Petrovna had first chanced upon this picture while still a young girl at an upper-class boarding school in Moscow. She at once fell in love with the portrait, as is customary for all young girls in boarding schools, who fall in love with anything at all including their teachers, mainly of drawing and calligraphy. What is curious here is not the young girl's feelings, but that even at the age of fifty Varvara Petrovna still kept this picture among her most intimate treasures, so that perhaps only because of it had she invented a costume for Stepan Trofimovich somewhat resembling the one in the picture. But, of course, that is also a small thing.
For the first years, or, more precisely, for the first half of his residence at Varvara Petrovna's, Stepan Trofimovich still had thoughts of some sort of a work, and was seriously preparing every day to write it. But for the second half he must even have forgotten what it had all been about. More and more often he would say to us: "It seems I'm ready to work, the materials have all been collected, yet the work doesn't come! Nothing gets done!" And he would hang his head dejectedly. No doubt this was supposed to give him even more grandeur in our eyes as a martyr of learning; but he himself wanted something else. "I'm forgotten, no one needs me!" escaped him more than once. This intense spleen took particular hold of him at the end of the fifties. Varvara Petrovna finally understood that it was a serious matter. And she also could not bear the thought that her friend was forgotten and not needed. To distract him, and to patch up his fame at the same time, she then took him to Moscow, where she had a few refined literary and learned connections; but, as it turned out, Moscow was not satisfactory either.
It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the former tranquillity, something quite strange, but felt everywhere, even in Skvoreshniki. Various rumors arrived. The facts were generally more or less known, but it was obvious that, besides the facts, certain accompanying ideas also appeared, and, what's more, in exceeding numbers. That was what was bewildering: there was no way to adapt and find out just exactly what these ideas meant. Varvara Petrovna, owing to the feminine makeup of her character, certainly wanted to suppose some secret in them. She herself began reading newspapers and magazines, prohibited foreign publications, and even the tracts that were beginning then (she had it all sent to her); but it only made her head spin. She started writing letters: the replies were few, and the longer it went on, the more incomprehensible they became. Stepan Trofimovich was solemnly invited to explain "all these ideas" to her once and for all; but she remained positively displeased with his explanations. Stepan Trofimovich's view of the general movement was scornful in the highest degree; with him it all came down to his being forgotten and not needed by anyone. Finally he, too, was remembered, first in foreign publications, as an exiled martyr, and immediately after that in Petersburg, as a former star in a noted constellation; he was even compared for some reason with Radishchev. [14] Then someone printed that he had died, and promised an obituary. Stepan Trofimovich instantly resurrected and reassumed his majesty. All the scornfulness of his views of his contemporaries dropped away at once, and a dream began burning in him: to join the movement and show his powers. Varvara Petrovna instantly believed again and in everything, and started bustling about terribly. It was decided that they should go to Petersburg without the least delay, to find out everything in reality, to go into it all personally, and, if possible, to involve themselves wholly and undividedly in the new activity. Among other things, she announced that she was prepared to found her own magazine and dedicate her whole life to it from then on. Seeing it had even come to that, Stepan Trofimovich became more scornful than ever, and during the trip began treating Varvara Petrovna almost patronizingly, which she immediately laid up in her heart. However, she also had another quite important reason for going—namely, the renewal of her high connections. She needed as far as possible to remind the world of herself, or at least to make the attempt. And the avowed pretext for the trip was a meeting with her only son, who was then finishing his studies at a Petersburg lycée.
VI
They went and stayed in Petersburg for almost the whole winter season. By Lent, however, everything burst like an iridescent soap bubble. The dreams scattered, and the jumble not only was not clarified, but became even more repellent. First, the high connections all but failed, except perhaps in microscopic form, and with humiliating strain. The insulted Varvara Petrovna threw herself wholly into the "new ideas" and began holding evenings. She invited writers, and they were immediately brought to her in great numbers. Afterwards they took to coming on their own, without invitation, each one bringing another. Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty. Some (though by no means all) even came drunk, but it was as if they perceived some special, just-yesterday-discovered beauty in it. They were all proud of something to the point of strangeness. It was written on all their faces that they had just discovered some extremely important secret. They were abusive, and considered it to their credit. It was rather difficult to find out precisely what they had written; but there were critics, novelists, playwrights, satirists, exposers among them. Stepan Trofimovich even penetrated their highest circle, the place from which the movement was directed. It was an immensely steep climb to reach the directors, but they met him cordially, though none of them, of course, knew or had heard anything about him except that he "represented an idea." He maneuvered among them so far that he even managed to invite them a couple of times to Varvara Petrovna's salon, despite all their olympianity. These were very serious and very polite people; they bore themselves well; the others were evidently afraid of them; but it was obvious that they had no time. Two or three former literary celebrities who then happened to be in Petersburg, and with whom Varvara Petrovna had long maintained the most refined relations, also came. But, to her surprise, these real and indisputable celebrities were meek as lambs, and some of them simply clung to all this new rabble and fawned on them shamefully. At first Stepan Trofimovich was in luck; they seized on him and began displaying him at public literary gatherings. When he came out on the platform for the first time as a reader at one of these public literary readings, there was a burst of wild applause that continued for about five minutes. He recalled it with tears nine years later—rather more because of his artistic nature than out of gratitude. "I swear to you and will wager," he himself said to me (but only to me, and as a secret), "that no one in that whole audience knew a blessed thing about me!" A remarkable confession: indeed he must have possessed keen intelligence if he could understand his position so clearly, right there on the platform, despite all his rapture; and indeed he must not have possessed very keen intelligence if even nine years later he could not recall it without feeling offended. He was made to sign two or three collective protests (against what, he himself did not know); he signed. Varvara Petrovna was also made to sign some "outrageous act," and she signed. [15]However, though the majority of these new people had been Varvara Petrovna's guests, they for some reason considered it their duty to look upon her with contempt and unconcealed derision. Stepan Trofimovich hinted to me afterwards, in bitter moments, that it was then that she had begun to envy him. Of course, she understood that she ought not to associate with these people, but still she received them avidly, with all of a woman's hysterical impatience, and, above all, kept expecting something. At her evenings she spoke little, though she could speak, but rather listened. They talked about the abolition of censorship, about spelling reform, about replacing Russian letters with Roman, about someone's exile the day before, about some scandal in the Passage, about the advantages of dividing Russia into a free federation of nationalities, about abolishing the army and navy, about restoring Poland up to the Dnieper, about peasant reform and tracts, about the abolition of inheritance, the family, children, and priests, about women's rights, about Kraevsky's house, for which no one would ever forgive Mr. Kraevsky, and so on and so forth. [16]It was clear that among this rabble of new people there were many swindlers, but it was also unquestionable that there were many honest and even quite attractive persons, despite certain nonetheless surprising nuances. The honest ones were far more incomprehensible than the rude and dishonest ones; but it was not clear who was making use of whom. When Varvara Petrovna announced her idea of publishing a magazine, still more people came flocking to her, but accusations also immediately flew in her face that she was a capitalist and an exploiter of labor. The unceremoniousness of the accusations was equaled only by their unexpectedness. The elderly general Ivan Ivanovich Drozdov, a former friend and fellow officer of the late general Stavrogin, a most worthy man (though in his own way), known to all of us here, extremely obstinate and irritable, who ate terribly much and was terribly afraid of atheism, began arguing at one of Varvara Petrovna's evenings with a famous young man. The latter said straight off: "Well, you're a general if you talk like that," meaning that he could not even find any worse abuse than a general. Ivan Ivanovich got extremely fired up: "Yes, sir, I am a general, a lieutenant general, and I've served my sovereign, and you, sir, are a brat and an atheist!" An impossible scandal took place. Next day the incident was exposed in the press and signatures were gathered under a collective letter against the "outrageous act" of Varvara Petrovna in not wishing to throw the general out at once. A caricature appeared in an illustrated magazine, caustically portraying Varvara Petrovna, the general, and Stepan Trofimovich together as three retrograde cronies; the picture was accompanied by some verses written by a people's poet solely for the occasion. I will add, for my part, that in fact many persons with the rank of general have the habit of saying ludicrously: "I have served my sovereign..." as if they did not have the same sovereign as the rest of us, the sovereign's ordinary subjects, but their own special one.
To remain any longer in Petersburg was, of course, impossible, the more so in that Stepan Trofimovich also suffered a final fiasco. He could not help himself and started proclaiming the rights of art, and they started laughing at him all the louder. At his last reading he decided to employ civic eloquence, fancying he would touch people's hearts and counting on their respect for his "exile." He unquestioningly agreed that the word "fatherland" was useless and comical; he also agreed with the notion of the harmfulness of religion; but he loudly and firmly proclaimed that boots are lower than Pushkin, even very much so. [17]He was hissed so mercilessly that he burst into tears right there, publicly, before he even got off the platform. Varvara Petrovna brought him home more dead than alive. "On m'a traité comme un vieux bonnet de coton!" [i] he babbled senselessly. She spent the whole night looking after him, gave him laurel water, and kept telling him until dawn: "You are still useful; you will still make your appearance; you will be appreciated... elsewhere."
The very next day, early in the morning, five writers called on Varvara Petrovna, three of them complete strangers whom she had never set eyes on before. They announced to her with stern faces that they had looked into the case of her magazine and had brought her their decision about it. Varvara Petrovna had decidedly never asked anyone to look into or decide anything about her magazine. The decision was that, after founding the magazine, she should at once turn it over to them, along with the capital, under the rights of a free co-operative; and she herself should leave for Skvoreshniki, and not forget to take along Stepan Trofimovich, "who was obsolete." From delicacy they agreed to acknowledge her right of ownership and to send her one sixth of the net income annually. Most touching of all was that, of these five people, four certainly had no mercenary motive, but were busying themselves only for the sake of the "common cause."
"We left as if in a daze," Stepan Trofimovich used to say. "I was unable to sort anything out and, I remember, kept muttering to the click-clack of the wheels:
Vek and Vek and Lev Kambek, Lev Kambek and Vek and Vek… [18]and devil knows what else, all the way to Moscow. It was only in Moscow that I came to my senses—as if indeed I could have found anything different there! Oh, my friends," he sometimes exclaimed, inspired, "you cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children! No! It was not so in our day, that is not what we strove for. No, no, not that at all. I recognize nothing... Our day will come once more, and once more turn all this wavering, all this present, onto a firm path. Otherwise what will there be?..."
VII
Immediately after their return from Petersburg, Varvara Petrovna sent her friend abroad—to "rest"; besides, they needed to be apart for a time, so she felt. Stepan Trofimovich was delighted to go. "I shall resurrect there!" he kept exclaiming. "There I shall finally take up my studies!" But with his first letters from Berlin he struck his perennial note. "My heart is broken," he wrote to Varvara Petrovna. "I can forget nothing! Here in Berlin everything reminds me of the old days, of my past, my first raptures, and my first torments. Where is she? Where are they both? Where are you, my two angels, of whom I was never worthy? Where is my son, my beloved son? Where, finally, am I, I myself, my former self, strong as steel and unshakable as rock, while now some Andrejeff, unOrthodox clown in a beard, peut briser mon existence en deux," [ii]etc., etc. As for Stepan Trofimovich's son, he had seen him only twice in his life, the first time when he was born, and the second time recently in Petersburg, where the young man was preparing to enter the university. The boy, as has already been mentioned, had been brought up all his life by his aunts (at Varvara Petrovna's keeping), in – province, five hundred miles from Skvoreshniki. And as for Andrejeff—that is, Andreev—he was simply one of our local merchants, a shopkeeper, a great eccentric, a self-taught archaeologist and passionate collector of Russian antiquities, who had occasional altercations with Stepan Trofimovich on learned matters, but above all to do with trends. This venerable merchant, with a gray beard and big silver spectacles, still owed Stepan Trofimovich four hundred roubles for the purchase of several acres of timber on his little estate (near Skvoreshniki). Though Varvara Petrovna lavishly provided her friend with means on sending him to Berlin, Stepan Trofimovich had still been counting especially on getting those four hundred roubles before he left, probably for his secret expenses, and nearly wept when Andrejeffasked him to wait a month—which, by the way, he had the right to do, since he had paid the first installment almost half a year ahead of time, because Stepan Trofimovich had had special need of it then. Varvara Petrovna read this first letter greedily and, having underlined in pencil the exclamation: "Where are you both?" dated it and locked it away in a box. He was, of course, recalling his two deceased wives. In the second letter that came from Berlin there was a variation in the tune: "I work twelve hours a day ["Or maybe just eleven," Varvara Petrovna grumbled], burrowing in the libraries, checking, taking notes, rushing about; have called on professors. Renewed my acquaintance with the excellent Dundasov family. How charming Nadezhda Nikolaevna is, even now! She sends her regards. Her young husband and all three nephews are in Berlin. In the evenings I converse with the young people till dawn, and we have almost Athenian nights, [19]though only in terms of refinement and elegance; it is all quite noble: there is a lot of music, Spanish airs, dreams of universal renewal, the idea of eternal beauty, the Sistine Madonna, [20]a light shot through with darkness, but then there are spots even on the sun! Oh, my friend, my noble, faithful friend! In my heart I am with you and am yours, always with you alone, en tout pays,even dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux, [iii] of which you remember we so often spoke, trembling, in Petersburg, before our departure. I recall it with a smile. Having crossed the border, I felt myself safe—a strange, new feeling, the first time after so many years..." etc., etc.
"Well, it's all nonsense!" Varvara Petrovna decided, folding up this letter, too. "If it's Athenian nights until dawn, then he's not sitting twelve hours over books. Was he drunk when he wrote it, or what? This Dundasov woman, how dare she send me her regards? Oh, well, let him have a good time..."
The phrase "dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux"meant: "where Makar never drove his calves." [21]Stepan Trofimovich sometimes deliberately translated Russian proverbs and popular sayings into French in a most stupid way, though he undoubtedly understood and could have translated them better. He did it from a special sort of chic, and found it witty.
But his good time was not long. He did not hold out even four months, and came rushing back to Skvoreshniki. His last letters consisted of nothing but outpourings of the most tenderhearted love for his absent friend and were literally wet with the tears of separation. There are natures that become extremely attached to home, like lap-dogs. The reunion of the two friends was rapturous. In two days everything was back the old way, and even more boring than the old way. "My friend," Stepan Trofimovich told me two weeks later, as the greatest secret, "my friend, I've discovered something new and... terrible for me: je suis unmere sponger et rien de plus! Mais r-r-rien de plus!" [iv]
VIII
Then came a lull which continued almost unbroken for all these nine years. Hysterical outbursts and weepings on my shoulder, which regularly recurred, did not hinder our prosperity in the least. I am surprised how it could have been that Stepan Trofimovich did not put on weight during that time. His nose only became a little redder, and he grew more benign. Gradually a circle of friends established itself around him, though a perpetually small one. Varvara Petrovna, who had little contact with this circle, was nevertheless acknowledged by us all as our patroness. After the Petersburg lesson, she settled herself permanently in our town; the winters she spent in her town house, and the summers on her suburban estate. Never before had she enjoyed so much importance and influence in our provincial society as during the last seven years, that is, right up to the appointment of our present governor. Our former governor, the mild and unforgettable Ivan Osipovich, was a close relation of hers and had once been the object of her benefactions. His wife trembled at the very thought of displeasing Varvara Petrovna, and the reverence of provincial society even went so far as to resemble something sinful. It was, consequently, good for Stepan Trofimovich as well. He was a member of the club, lost majestically at cards, and earned himself esteem, though many looked upon him as merely a "scholar." Later on, when Varvara Petrovna permitted him to live in a separate house, we felt even more free. We gathered at his place about twice a week; it used to get quite merry, especially when he was generous with the champagne. The wine came from the shop of that same Andreev. Varvara Petrovna paid the bill every six months, and the day of payment was almost always a day of cholerine.
The most long-standing member of the circle was Liputin, a provincial official, no longer a young man, a great liberal and known around town as an atheist. He got married for the second time to a young and pretty woman, took her dowry, and had, besides, three adolescent daughters. He kept his whole family in fear of God and under lock and key, was exceedingly stingy, and had set aside a little house and some capital for himself from his service. He was a restless person, and of low rank besides, little respected in town, and not received in higher circles. Moreover, he was an undisguised gossip and had more than once been punished, and punished painfully, for it—once by some officer, and another time by a landowner, the respectable head of a family. But we loved his sharp wit, his inquisitiveness, his peculiar wicked gaiety. Varvara Petrovna did not like him, but somehow he was always able to get in good with her.
She also did not like Shatov, who became a member of the circle only in the last year. Shatov had been a student, but was expelled from the university after some student incident; as a child he had been Stepan Trofimovich's pupil, and he had been born Varvara Petrovna's serf, the son of her late valet Pavel Fyodorov, and had been the object of her benefactions. She disliked him for his pride and ingratitude, and simply could not forgive him for not coming to her at once after he was expelled from the university; on the contrary, he did not even reply to the letter she specially sent him then, and preferred putting himself in bondage to some civilized merchant as teacher of his children. He went abroad with this merchant's family, more as a baby-sitter than as a tutor; but at the time he wanted very much to go abroad. The children had a governess as well, a pert Russian girl who also joined the household just before their departure and was taken mainly for her cheapness. About two months later the merchant threw her out for "free thoughts." Shatov went trudging after her and soon married her in Geneva. They lived together for about three weeks, and then parted as free people not bound by anything; also, of course, because of poverty. For a long time afterwards he wandered around Europe alone, living God knows how; they say he shined shoes in the streets and worked as a stevedore in some port. Finally, about a year ago, he came back to his own nest here and stayed with an old aunt, whom he buried within a month. His communications with his sister Dasha, who was also Varvara Petrovna's ward and lived with her as her favorite on the most noble footing, were very rare and distant. With us he was perpetually glum and taciturn; but occasionally, when his convictions were touched upon, he became morbidly irritated and quite unrestrained in his language. "Shatov should be tied up before you try reasoning with him," Stepan Trofimovich sometimes joked; yet he loved him. Abroad, Shatov had radically changed some of his former socialist convictions and leaped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those ideal Russian beings who can suddenly be so struck by some strong idea that it seems to crush them then and there, sometimes even forever. They are never strong enough to master it, but they are passionate believers, and so their whole life afterwards is spent in some last writhings, as it were, under the stone that has fallen on them and already half crushed them. In appearance Shatov corresponded completely to his convictions: he was clumsy, blond, shaggy, short, with broad shoulders, thick lips, bushy, beetling white eyebrows, a scowling forehead, and unfriendly eyes stubbornly downcast and as if ashamed of something. There was this one lock of his hair that simply refused to lie flat and was eternally sticking up. He was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. "It no longer surprises me that his wife ran away from him," Varvara Petrovna once allowed, after studying him intently. He tried to dress neatly, despite his extreme poverty. He again refused to turn to Varvara Petrovna for help, but got by on whatever God sent him; he also had some doings with shopkeepers. One time he sat in a shop; then he almost left altogether on a trading ship as a salesman's assistant, but fell ill just before the departure. It is hard to imagine what poverty he was able to endure without even giving it a thought. After his illness, Varvara Petrovna secretly and anonymously sent him a hundred roubles. He found out the secret, however, pondered, accepted the money, and went to Varvara Petrovna to thank her. She received him warmly, but here, too, he shamefully deceived her expectations: he sat for only five minutes, silent, staring dully at the floor and smiling stupidly, and suddenly, without letting her finish speaking and at the most interesting point of the conversation, got up, bowed somehow sideways, hulkily, dissolved in shame, incidentally brushed against her expensive inlaid worktable, which went crashing to the floor and broke, and walked out nearly dead from disgrace. Liputin later upbraided him strongly, not only for accepting the hundred roubles instead of rejecting them with contempt as coming from his former despot-landowner, but for dragging himself there to thank her on top of it. He lived solitarily on the outskirts of town, and did not like it when anyone, even one of us, stopped to see him. He regularly came to Stepan Trofimovich's evenings, and borrowed newspapers and books to read from him.
