Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Appendix
The Original Part Two, Chapter 9
At Tikhon's
I
Nikolai Vsevolodovich did not sleep that night and spent the whole of it sitting on the sofa, often turning his fixed gaze towards one point in the corner by the chest of drawers. His lamp burned all night. Around seven in the morning he fell asleep sitting up, and when Alexei Yegorovich, as their custom had been established once and for all, came into his room at exactly half past nine with a morning cup of coffee, and woke him up by his appearance, he, having opened his eyes, seemed unpleasantly surprised that he could have slept so long and that it was already so late. He hastily drank his coffee, hastily dressed, and hurriedly left the house. To Alexei Yegorovich's cautious inquiry: "Will there be any orders?"—he answered nothing. He walked along the street, looking at the ground, deep in thought, and only at moments raising his head and suddenly showing now and then some vague but intense disquiet. At one intersection, still not far from his house, a crowd of men crossed his path, fifty or more; they walked decorously, almost silently, in deliberate order. By the shop near which he had to wait for about a minute, someone said they were "Shpigulin workers." He barely paid any attention to them. Finally, at around half past ten, he reached the gates of our Savior – St. Yefimi Bogorodsky monastery, [211]on the outskirts of town, by the river. It was only here that he suddenly seemed to remember something, stopped, hastily and anxiously felt for something in his side pocket—and grinned. Entering the grounds, he asked the first server he met how to find Bishop Tikhon, who was living in retirement in the monastery. The server began bowing and led him off at once. By the porch at the end of a long, two-storied monastery building, they met a fat and gray-haired monk, who imperiously and deftly took him over from the server and led him through a long, narrow corridor, also kept bowing (although, being unable to bend down owing to his fatness, he merely jerked his head frequently and abruptly) and kept inviting him to please come in, though Stavrogin was following him even without that. The monk kept posing all sorts of questions and talked about the father archimandrite; [212]receiving no answers, he became more and more deferential. Stavrogin noticed that he was known there, though, as far as he could remember, he had come there only in childhood. When they reached the door at the very end of the corridor, the monk opened it as if with an imperious hand, inquired familiarly of the cell attendant who sprang over to him whether they could come in, and, without even waiting for an answer, flung the door wide and, inclining, allowed the "dear" visitor to pass by: then, having been rewarded, he quickly vanished, all but fled. Nikolai Vsevolodovich entered a small room, and at almost the same moment there appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room a tall and lean man of about fifty-five, in a simple household cassock, who looked as if he were somewhat ill, with a vague smile and a strange, as if shy, glance. This was the very Tikhon of whom Nikolai Vsevolodovich had heard for the first time from Shatov, and of whom, since then, he had managed to gather certain information.
The information was diverse and contradictory, but there was something common to all of it—namely, that those who loved and those who did not love Tikhon (there were such), all somehow passed over him in silence—those who did not love him, probably out of scorn, and his devotees, even the ardent ones, out of some sort of modesty, as if they wished to conceal something about him, some weakness of his, perhaps holy folly. [213]Nikolai Vsevolodovich learned that he had been living in the monastery for some six years and that he was visited by the simplest people as well as the noblest persons; that even in far-off Petersburg he had ardent admirers, chiefly lady admirers. On the other hand, he heard from one of our dignified little old "club" gentlemen, a pious gentleman himself, that "this Tikhon is all but mad, a totally giftless being in any case, and unquestionably a tippler." I will add, running ahead of myself, that this last is decidedly nonsense, that he simply had a chronic rheumatic condition in his legs and now and then some nervous spasms. Nikolai Vsevolodovich also learned that, either from weakness of character or from "an absentmindedness unpardonable and unbefitting his rank," the retired bishop had proved unable to inspire any particular respect for himself in the monastery. It was said that the father archimandrite, a stern and strict man with regard to his duties as a superior, and known, besides, for his learning, even nursed a certain hostility towards him, as it were, and denounced him (not to his face, but indirectly) for careless living and almost for heresy. The monastery brethren, too, seemed to treat the ailing bishop not so much carelessly as, so to speak, familiarly. The two rooms that constituted Tikhon's cell were also furnished somehow strangely. Alongside clumpish old-style furniture with worn-through leather stood three or four elegant pieces: a luxurious easy chair, a big desk of excellent finish, an elegantly carved bookcase, little tables, whatnots—all given to him. There was an expensive Bukhara carpet, and straw mats alongside it. There were prints of "secular" subjects and from mythological times, and right there in the corner, on a big icon stand, icons gleaming with gold and silver, among them one from ancient times with relics. The library, they say, had also been assembled in a much too varied and contrasting way: alongside the writings of great Christian hierarchs and ascetics, there were theatrical writings "and maybe even worse." After the first greetings, spoken for some reason with obvious mutual awkwardness, hastily and even indistinctly, Tikhon led his visitor to the study, sat him down on the sofa facing the table, and placed himself next to him in a wicker armchair. Nikolai Vsevolodovich was still greatly distracted by some inner anxiety that was oppressing him. It looked as if he had resolved upon something extraordinary and unquestionable but at the same time almost impossible for him. For a minute or so he looked around the study, apparently not noticing what he was looking at; he was thinking and, of course, did not know what about. He was roused by the silence, and it suddenly seemed to him that Tikhon looked down somehow bashfully and even with some unnecessary and ridiculous smile. This instantly aroused loathing in him; he wanted to get up and leave, the more so as Tikhon, in his opinion, was decidedly drunk. But the man suddenly raised his eyes and gave him a look that was so firm and so full of thought, and at the same time so unexpected and enigmatic in its expression, that he almost jumped. He imagined somehow that Tikhon already knew why he had come, had already been forewarned (though no one in the whole world could have known the reason), and that if he did not start speaking first, it was to spare him, for fear of humiliating him.
"Do you know me?" he suddenly asked curtly. "Did I introduce myself to you when I came in? I'm rather distracted..."
"You did not introduce yourself, but I had the pleasure of seeing you once, four years ago, here at the monastery ... by chance."
Tikhon spoke very unhurriedly and evenly, in a soft voice, pronouncing the words clearly and distinctly.
"I wasn't in this monastery four years ago," Nikolai Vsevolodovich objected, somehow even rudely, "I was here only as a little child, when you weren't here at all."
"Perhaps you've forgotten?" Tikhon observed cautiously and without insistence.
"No, I haven't forgotten; and it would be funny not to remember," Stavrogin insisted somehow excessively. "Perhaps you simply heard about me and formed some idea, and so you confused that with seeing me."
Tikhon held his peace. Here Nikolai Vsevolodovich noticed how a nervous twitch would occasionally pass over his face, the sign of an old nervous disorder.
"I can see only that you are not well today," he said, "and I think it will be better if I leave."
He even made as if to get up from his place.
"Yes, today and yesterday I've been feeling severe pain in my legs, and I got little sleep last night..."
Tikhon stopped. His visitor again and suddenly fell back into his former vague pensiveness. The silence lasted a long time, about two minutes.
"Have you been watching me?" he suddenly asked, anxiously and suspiciously.
"I was looking at you and recalling your mother's features. For all the lack of external resemblance, there is much resemblance inwardly, spiritually."
"No resemblance at all, especially spiritually. None what-so-ever!" Nikolai Vsevolodovich, anxious again, insisted unnecessarily and excessively, himself not knowing why. "You're just saying it. . . out of sympathy for my position and—rubbish," he suddenly blurted out. "Hah! does my mother come to see you?"
"She does."
"I didn't know. Never heard it from her. Often?"
"Almost every month, or oftener."
"I never, never heard. Never heard. And you, of course, have heard from her that I'm crazy," he suddenly added.
"No, not really that you're crazy. However, I have also heard this notion, but from others."
"You must have a very good memory, then, if you can recall such trifles. And have you heard about the slap?"
"I've heard something."
"Everything, that is. You have an awful lot of spare time. And about the duel?"
"And about the duel."
"You've heard quite a lot here. No need for newspapers in this place. Did Shatov warn you about me? Eh?"
"No. I do know Mr. Shatov, however, but it's a long time since I've seen him."
"Hm... What's that map you've got there? Hah, a map of the last war! How do you have any need for that?"
"I was checking the chart against the text. A most interesting description."
"Show me. Yes, it's not a bad account. Strange reading for you, however."
He drew the book to him and took a fleeting glance at it. It was a voluminous and talented account of the circumstances of the last war, [214] though not so much in a military as in a purely literary sense. He turned the book over in his hands and suddenly tossed it aside impatiently.
"I decidedly do not know why I've come here," he said with disgust, looking straight into Tikhon's eyes, as if expecting him to reply.
"You, too, seem to be unwell?"
"Yes, unwell."
And suddenly, though in the most brief and curt expressions, so that some things were even hard to understand, he told how he was subject, especially at night, to hallucinations of a sort; how he sometimes saw or felt near him some malicious being, scoffing and "reasonable," "in various faces and characters, but one and the same, and I always get angry..."
These revelations were wild and incoherent, and indeed came as if from a crazy man. But, for all that, Nikolai Vsevolodovich spoke with such strange sincerity, never before seen in him, with such simple-heartedness, completely unlike him, that it seemed the former man, suddenly and inadvertently, had vanished in him completely. He was not in the least ashamed to show the fear with which he spoke about his phantom. But all this was momentary and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
"This is all rubbish," he said quickly and with awkward vexation, recollecting himself. "I'll go to a doctor."
"You certainly should," Tikhon confirmed.
"You say it so affirmatively ... Have you seen such people as I, with such visions?"
"I have, but very rarely. I remember only one such in my life, an army officer, after he lost his wife, an irreplaceable life's companion for him. The other I only heard about. They were both cured abroad... And how long have you been subject to this?"
"About a year, but it's all rubbish. I'll go to a doctor. It's all rubbish, terrible rubbish. It's I myself in various aspects and nothing more. Since I've just added this... sentence, you must be thinking I'm still doubtful and am not certain that it's I and not actually a demon?"
Tikhon gave him a questioning look.
"And ... do you see him really?" he asked, so as to remove all doubt that it was undoubtedly a false and morbid hallucination, "do you actually see some sort of image?"
"It's strange that you should insist about it, when I've already told you I do," Stavrogin again began to grow more irritated with every word, "of course I do, I see it, just as I see you... and sometimes I see it and am not sure I see it, though I do see it... and sometimes I'm not sure I see it, and I don't know what's true: he or I. . . it's all rubbish. And you, can't you somehow suppose that it's actually a demon?" he added, laughing, and changing too abruptly to a scoffing tone. "Wouldn't that be more in line with your profession?"
"It's more likely an illness, although..."
"Although what?"
"Demons undoubtedly exist, but the understanding of them can vary greatly."
"You lowered your eyes again just now," Stavrogin picked up with irritable mockery, "because you were ashamed for me, that I believe in the demon, and yet in the guise of not believing I slyly asked you the question: does he or does he not actually exist?"
Tikhon smiled vaguely.
"And, you know, lowering your eyes is totally unbecoming to you: unnatural, ridiculous, and affected, and to give satisfaction for my rudeness I will tell you seriously and brazenly: I believe in the demon, believe canonically in a personal demon, not an allegory, and I have no need to elicit anything from anyone, there you have it. You must be terribly glad ..."
He gave a nervous, unnatural laugh. Tikhon was gazing at him with curiosity, his eyes gentle and as if somewhat timid.
"Do you believe in God?" Stavrogin suddenly blurted out.
"I do."
"It is said that if you believe and tell a mountain to move, it will move [215]... that's rubbish, however. But, still, I'm curious: could you move a mountain, or not?"
"If God told me to, I could," Tikhon said softly and with restraint, again beginning to lower his eyes.
"Well, but that's the same as if God moved it himself. No, you, you, as a reward for your belief in God?"
"Perhaps not."
“‘Perhaps'? That's not bad. And why do you doubt?"
"I don't believe perfectly."
"What, you?not perfectly? not fully?"
"Yes... perhaps not to perfection."
"Well! In any case you still believe that at least with God's help you could move it, and that's no small thing. It's still a bit more than the très peu [ccxxiv] of a certain also archbishop—under the sword, it's true. [216]You are, of course, a Christian, too?"
"Let me not be ashamed of thy cross, O Lord," Tikhon almost whispered in a sort of passionate whisper, inclining his head still more. The corners of his lips suddenly moved nervously and quickly.
"And is it possible to believe in a demon, without believing at all in God?" Stavrogin laughed.
"Oh, quite possible, it happens all the time," Tikhon raised his eyes and also smiled.
"And I'm sure you find such faith more respectable than total disbelief... Oh, you cleric!" Stavrogin burst out laughing. Tikhon again smiled to him.
"On the contrary, total atheism is more respectable than worldly indifference," he added, gaily and ingenuously.
"Oho, so that's how you are."
"A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear."
"However, you... you have read the Apocalypse?"
"I have."
"Do you remember: 'To the angel of the church in Laodicea write...'?"
"I do. Lovely words."
"Lovely? A strange expression for a bishop, and generally you are an odd man... Where is the book?" Stavrogin became strangely hurried and anxious, his eyes seeking the book on the table. "I'd like to read it to you ... do you have a Russian translation?"
"I know it, I know the passage, I remember it very well," said Tikhon.
"You know it by heart? Recite it! ..."
He quickly lowered his eyes, rested his two palms on his knees, and impatiently prepared to listen. Tikhon recited, recalling it word for word: "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked..." [217]
"Enough..." Stavrogin cut him short. "It's for the middling sort, for the indifferent ones, right? You know, I love you very much."
"And I you," Tikhon responded in a low voice.
Stavrogin fell silent and suddenly lapsed again into his former pensiveness. This occurred as if in fits, for the third time now. And he had said "I love you" to Tikhon also almost in a fit, at least unexpectedly for himself. More than a minute passed.
"Don't be angry," Tikhon whispered, touching his elbow just barely with his finger, and as if growing timid himself. The other gave a start and frowned wrathfully.
"How could you tell I was angry?" he said quickly. Tikhon was about to say something, but the other suddenly interrupted him in inexplicable alarm:
"What made you precisely think I was sure to get angry? Yes, I was angry, you're right, and precisely for having said 'I love you.' You're right, but you're a crude cynic, your thoughts are humiliating to human nature. There might be no anger if it was another man and not me... However, the point isn't about this other one, but about me. Anyhow you're an odd man and a holy fool..."
He was growing more and more irritated, and, strangely, no longer bothered about his words:
"Listen, I don't like spies and psychologists, at least those who try to pry into my soul. I don't invite anyone into my soul, I don't need anyone, I'm able to manage by myself. You think I'm afraid of you?" he raised his voice and looked up defiantly. "You are fully convinced that I've come to reveal some 'dreadful' secret to you and are waiting for it with all the monkish curiosity you're capable of? Well, know then that I shall reveal nothing to you, no secret, because I don't need you at all."
Tikhon looked at him steadily:
"You are struck that the Lamb loves the cold one better than the merely lukewarm one," he said. "You do not want to be merelyluke-warm. I feel that you are in the grip of an extraordinary intention, perhaps a terrible one. If so, I implore you, do not torment yourself and tell me everything you've come with."
"And you knew for certain that I had come with something?"
"I... guessed it from your face," Tikhon whispered, lowering his eyes.
Nikolai Vsevolodovich was somewhat pale, his hands were trembling slightly. For a few seconds he looked motionlessly and silently at Tikhon, as if making a final decision. Finally he took some printed pages from the side pocket of his frock coat and placed them on the table.
"These are pages intended for distribution," he said in a somewhat faltering voice. "If at least one man reads them, then you should know that I am not going to conceal them, and everyone will read them. That is decided. I don't need you at all, because I've decided everything. But read it... While you're reading, don't say anything, and when you've finished—say everything..."
"Shall I read it?" Tikhon asked hesitantly.
"Read it; I've long been at peace."
"No, I can't make it out without my glasses; the print is fine, foreign."
"Here are your glasses," Stavrogin picked them up from the table, handed them to him, and leaned back on the sofa. Tikhon immersed himself in reading.
II
The print was indeed foreign—three printed pages of ordinary, small-format stationery, sewn together. It must have been printed secretly by some Russian press abroad, and at first glance the pages looked very much like a tract. The heading read: "From Stavrogin." I introduce this document into my chronicle verbatim. One may suppose it is now known to many. I have allowed myself only to correct the spelling errors, rather numerous, which even surprised me somewhat, since the author was after all an educated man, and even a well-read one (judging relatively, of course). In the style I have made no changes, despite the errors and even obscurities. In any case, it is apparent that the author is above all not a writer.
FROM STAVROGIN
I, Nikolai Stavrogin, a retired officer, was living in Petersburg in the year 1867, giving myself over to debauchery in which I found no pleasure. For a certain stretch of time then, I had three apartments. In one of them I myself lived, in a rooming house with board and service, where Marya Lebyadkin, now my lawful wife, was then also living. My other two apartments I then rented by the month for an intrigue: in one of them I received a lady who was in love with me, and in the other her maid, and for a while I was much taken up by the intention of bringing the two together, so that the mistress and the wench should meet at my place, in the presence of my friends and the husband. Knowing both their characters, I expected to derive great pleasure from this stupid joke.
While I was leisurely preparing this meeting, I had more often to visit one of these apartments, in a large house on Gorokhovy Street, since this was where the maid used to come. I had only one room there, on the fourth floor, rented from some Russian tradespeople. [218]They themselves occupied the next room, a smaller one, so much so that the door between the two was always left open, which was just what I wanted. The husband worked in someone's office and was away from morning till night. The wife, a woman of about forty, cut up and remade new clothes out of old ones, and also frequently left the house to deliver what she had sewn. I would be left alone with their daughter, about fourteen years old, I think, but who still looked quite a child. Her name was Matryosha. The mother loved her, but used to beat her often, and yelled at her terribly, as such women have a habit of doing. This girl served me and tidied up behind my screen. I declare that I have forgotten the number of the house. Now, on inquiring, I have learned that the old house was demolished, resold, and in place of two or three former houses there stands one very large new one. I have also forgotten the family name of my tradespeople (maybe I did not know it then, either). I remember that the woman's name was Stepanida—Mikhailovna, I think. His I don't remember. Who they were, where they came from, and what has become of them, I have no idea. I suppose if one were really to start searching and making all sorts of inquiries from the Petersburg police, one might find traces. The apartment was on the courtyard, in a corner. It all happened in June. The house was of a light blue color.
One day a penknife, which I didn't need at all and which was just lying about, disappeared from my table. I told the landlady, not even thinking she would whip her daughter. But the woman had just yelled at the child (I lived simply, and they didn't stand on ceremony with me) for the disappearance of some rag, suspecting her of filching it, and had even pulled her hair. And when this same rag was found under the tablecloth, the girl chose not to utter a word of reproach and watched silently. I noticed this, and then for the first time noticed the child's face, which before had just flitted by. She was pale-haired and freckled, an ordinary face, but with much in it that was childish and quiet, extremely quiet. The mother was displeased that the daughter did not reproach her for having beaten her for nothing, and she shook her fist at her, but did not hit her; just then my penknife came up. Indeed, there was no one there except the three of us, and only the girl had gone behind my screen. The woman went wild, because her first beating had been unjust, rushed for the broom, pulled some twigs from it, and whipped the girl so that she raised welts on her, right in front of me. Matryosha did not cry out from the birching, but somehow whimpered strangely at each stroke. And afterwards she whimpered very much, for a whole hour.
But before that here is what happened: at the same moment as the landlady was rushing to pull the twigs from the broom, I found the knife on my bed, where it had somehow fallen from the table. It immediately came into my head not to announce anything, so that she would get a birching. I decided on it instantly: such moments always take my breath away. But I intend to tell everything in the firmest words, so that nothing remains hidden any longer.
Every extremely shameful, immeasurably humiliating, mean, and, above all, ridiculous position I have happened to get into in my life has always aroused in me, along with boundless wrath, an unbelievable pleasure. Exactly the same as in moments of crime, or in moments threatening to life. If I was stealing something, I would feel, while committing the theft, intoxication from the awareness of the depth of my meanness. It was not meanness that I loved (here my reason was completely sound), but I liked the intoxication from the tormenting awareness of my baseness. In the same way, each time I stood at the barrier waiting for my adversary to shoot, I felt the same shameful and violent sensation, and once extraordinarily strongly. I confess, I often sought it out myself, because for me it is stronger than any of its sort. When I was slapped (and I have been slapped twice in my life), it was there as well, in spite of the terrible wrath. But if, for all that, the wrath can be restrained, the pleasure will exceed anything imaginable. I never spoke of it to anyone, never even hinted at it, and concealed it as a shame and a disgrace. Yet when I was badly beaten once in a pot-house in Petersburg, and dragged by the hair, I did not feel this sensation, but only unbelievable wrath, without being drunk, but just fighting. Yet if that Frenchman abroad, the vicomtewho slapped me and whose lower jaw I shot off for it, had seized my hair and pulled me down, I would have felt intoxication and perhaps not even wrath. So it seemed to me then.
All this so that everyone will know that this feeling never subjected the whole of me, but there was always full consciousness left (and it was all based on consciousness!). And though it possessed me to the point of recklessness, it never came to the point of forgetting myself. Going as far as a perfect burning in me, I was at the same time quite able to subdue it, even to stop it at its peak. I am convinced that I could live my whole life as a monk, despite the animal sensuality I am endowed with and which I have always provoked. Giving myself with extraordinary immoderation, until the age of sixteen, to the vice confessed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, [219]I stopped it the moment I decided I wanted to, in my seventeenth year. I am always master of myself when I want to be. And so, let it be known that I do not want to seek irresponsibility for my crimes either in the environment or in illness.
When the punishment was over, I put the knife into my waistcoat pocket, went out, and threw it away in the street, far from the house, so that no one would ever know. Then I waited for two days. The girl cried a little and became even more silent; against me, I am convinced, she had no spiteful feeling. Though there probably was some shame at having been punished in such a way in front of me, she hadn't cried out, but had only whimpered under the strokes, of course because I was standing there and saw it all. But, being a child, she probably blamed only herself for this shame. Up to then, perhaps, she had only feared me, not personally, but as a tenant, a stranger, and it seems she was very timid.
It was during those two days that I once asked myself the question whether I could drop it and walk away from my planned intention, and I felt at once that I could, could at any time and at that very moment. Around then I wanted to kill myself, from the disease of indifference; however, I do not know from what. During those same two or three days (because I absolutely had to wait until the girl forgot it all), I committed a theft in the rooming house, probably to distract myself from incessant dreaming, or just for the fun of it. This was the only theft in my life.
There were many people nesting in that rooming house. Among them was one official and his family, living in two furnished rooms; about forty years old, not all that stupid, and with a decent air, but poor. I never got close with him, and he was afraid of the company that surrounded me there. He had just received his pay, thirty-five roubles. What chiefly prompted me was that at that moment I really did need money (though four days later I received a postal money order), so that I stole as if from need and not as a joke. It was done brazenly and obviously: I simply went into his room while he and his wife and children were having dinner in their other closet. There on the chair, right next to the door, lay his folded uniform. The thought had suddenly flashed in me still in the corridor. I thrust my hand into the pocket and took out the wallet. But the official heard a rustle and peeked out of the closet. It seems he even saw at least something, but since it was not everything, of course he did not believe his eyes. I said that as I was going down the corridor I came in to glance at the time on his wall clock. "Stopped, sir," he replied, and I left.
I was drinking a lot then, and there used to be a whole crowd in my rooms, Lebyadkin among them. I threw out the wallet with the small change and kept the bills. There were thirty-two roubles, three red bills and two yellow. I broke one of the red ones immediately and sent for champagne; then I sent another red one, and then the third. About four hours later, in the evening, the official stood waiting for me in the corridor.
