Текст книги "Notes from Underground"
Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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But, angry though I was, the victory still went to him. I didn't even hold out for four days. He began with what he always began with on such occasions – for there had already been such occasions, or attempts (and, I will note, I knew it all beforehand, I knew his mean tactics by heart) – that is, he usually began by fixing me with an extremely stern look, not taking it off me for several minutes at a time, following me with his eyes especially when I came in or was leaving the house. If, for example, I held out and pretended not to notice these looks, he would proceed, silently as ever, to further tortures. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he would come softly and smoothly into my room while I was pacing about or reading, stop by the door, put one arm behind his back, thrust out one hip, and fix me with his eyes, no longer so much stern as altogether contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make no reply, and go on staring at me point-blank for several seconds more; then, pressing his lips together in some special way, with a significant air, he would turn slowly on his heel and suddenly go to his room. About two hours later he would suddenly emerge again, and again appear before me in the same way. Sometimes, in my fury, I would no longer ask what he wanted, but simply raise my head abruptly and imperiously, and also begin staring point-blank at him. And so we'd stare at each other like that for about two minutes; finally, he would turn, slowly and pompously, and go away for another two hours.
If I refused to be brought to reason by all this and continued my rebellion, he would suddenly begin to sigh as he looked at me, sigh long and deeply, as if measuring with each sigh the full depth of my moral fall, and, of course, it would end at last with him overcoming me completely: I'd get furious, I'd shout, but with that which had been the whole point I'd be forced to comply.
This time, however, as soon as the usual "stern look" maneuvers began, I immediately lost my temper and fell on him in a fury. I was all too irritated to begin with.
"Stop!" I yelled in a frenzy, as he was turning, slowly and silently, one arm behind his back, to go to his room. "Stop! Come back! Come back, I tell you!" And I must have bellowed so unnaturally that he turned and began to study me even with a certain surprise. However, he still did not say a word, and it was this that infuriated me.
"How dare you come in here without permission and stare at me like that! Answer!"
But he, having looked at me calmly for about half a minute, again began to turn around.
"Stop!" I roared, running up to him, "don't move! So. Now answer: what did you come in here and stare for?"
"If there's something you want done direckly, it's my duty to see to it," he replied, again after some silence, lisping softly and measuredly, raising his eyebrows, and calmly shifting his head from one side to the other – and all that with horrifying composure.
"That's not it, that's not what I'm asking you, hangman!" I shouted, shaking with anger. "I'll tell you myself, hangman, why you keep coming here: you see I'm not giving you your wages, in your pride you don't want to bow and beg, and for that you come with your stupid staring to punish me, to torture me, and you don't even r-r-realize, hangman, how stupid it is, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!"
He again began to turn silently, but I grabbed him.
"Listen," I was shouting at him. "Here's the money, see, here it is!" (I took it out of the drawer.) "All seven roubles, but you won't get it, you will not get it, until such time as you come respectfully, with a guilty head, to ask my forgiveness. Do you hear!"
"That can never be!" he replied, with a sort of unnatural self-assurance.
"It will be!" I was shouting. "I give you my word of honor, it will be!"
"And there's nothing for me to ask your forgiveness about," he went on, as if not noticing my shouts at all, "seeing as you yourself have abused me with 'hangman,' on which offense I can always apply against you at the precinct."
"Go! Apply!" I roared. "Go now, this minute, this second! And you're still a hangman! hangman! hangman!" But he just looked at me, then turned and, no longer listening to my appeals, went smoothly to his place without a backward glance.
"There wouldn't be any of this if it weren't for Liza!" I decided to myself. Then, after a moment's pause, pompously and solemnly, but slowly and with a pounding heart, I myself proceeded behind his screen.
"Apollon!" I said softly and measuredly, though I was suffocating, "go for the police chief at once, without the slightest delay!"
He had managed meanwhile to sit down at his table, put on his spectacles, and begin some sewing. But hearing my order, he suddenly snorted with laughter.
"Go now, this minute! Go, or you can't even imagine what will happen!"
"Truly, you're not in your right senses," he observed, without even raising his head, with the same slow lisp, and continuing to thread his needle. "Who's ever seen a man go to the authorities against himself? And as to scaring me – you're exerting yourself in vain, because – nothing will happen."
"Go!" I shrieked, grabbing him by the shoulder. I felt I was about to strike him.
And I did not even hear how the outer door opened at that moment, softly and slowly, and some figure entered, stopped, and began gazing at us in perplexity. I looked, died of shame, and rushed to my room. There, clutching my hair with both hands, I leaned my head against the wall and stood frozen in that position.
About two minutes later I heard the slow steps of Apollon.
" Some… one is asking for you out there," he said, looking at me with particular sternness, then stepped aside and let in – Liza. He did not want to leave, and stared at us mockingly.
"Get out! Get out!" I ordered repeatedly, quite lost. At that moment my clock strained, hissed, and struck seven.
IX
And now, full mistress of the place, Come bold and free into my house.
From the same poetry
I stood before her, destroyed, branded, disgustingly embarrassed, and, I think, smiling, trying as hard as I could to wrap myself in my ragged old quilted dressing gown – well, exactly as I had pictured to myself recently in fallen spirits. Apollon hovered around us for about two minutes and then left, but that made it no easier for me. Worst of all was that she, too, suddenly became embarrassed, much more so than I would even have expected. From looking at me, of course.
"Sit down," I said mechanically, and moved a chair out for her at the table, while I myself sat on the sofa. She sat down at once and obediently, staring at me all eyes, apparently expecting something from me right then. The naivety of this expectation infuriated me, but I restrained myself.
The thing to do here would have been to try not to notice anything, as if it were all quite ordinary, but she… And I sensed vaguely that she was going to pay dearly for it all…
"You find me in an odd situation, Liza," I began, stammering, and knowing that this was precisely not how I should have begun.
"No, no, don't think anything of the sort!" I cried, seeing her suddenly blush. "I'm not ashamed of my poverty… On the contrary, I look upon my poverty with pride. I'm poor, but noble… One can be poor and noble," I went on mumbling. "However… would you like some tea?"
"No…" she tried to begin.
"Wait!"
I jumped up and ran to Apollon. I really had to vanish somewhere.
"Apollon," I whispered in a feverish patter, flinging down before him the seven roubles, which had remained in my fist all the while, "here's your wages; see, I'm giving it to you; but for that you must save me: go at once and bring some tea and ten rusks from the tavern. If you refuse to go, you'll ruin a man's happiness. You don't know what this woman is… This is -everything. You're perhaps having certain thoughts… But you don't know what this woman is!…"
Apollon, who had already sat down to work, and had already put his spectacles back on, at first, without abandoning his needle, silently cast a sidelong glance at the money; then, paying no attention to me and not answering me at all, he went on fussing with his thread, which he was still trying to put through the needle. I waited for about three minutes, standing before him, my arms folded a la Napoleon. My temples were damp with sweat; I was pale, I could sense it. But, thank God, he must have felt sorry looking at me. Having finished with his needle, he slowly rose from his seat, slowly moved the chair aside, slowly took off his spectacles, slowly counted the money, and at last, having asked me over his shoulder: should he get a full portion? – slowly walked out of the room. As I was returning to Liza, it occurred to me on the way: why don't I flee, just as I am, in my wretched old dressing gown, wherever my feet take me, and come what may?
I sat down again. She looked at me anxiously. For several minutes we said nothing.
"I'll kill him!" I suddenly cried, banging my fist so hard on the table that the ink splashed out of the inkstand.
"Ah! What is it!" she cried with a start.
"I'll kill him, I'll kill him!" I was shrieking, pounding on the table, in a perfect frenzy, and at the same time with a perfect understanding of how stupid it was to be in such a frenzy.
"You don't know, Liza, what this hangman is for me. He's my hangman… He's just gone to get some rusks; he…"
And I suddenly broke down in tears. It was a fit. Oh, how ashamed I was between sobs; but I could no longer hold them back.
She was frightened. "What is it! What's the matter!" she kept crying out, bustling around me.
"Water, give me water, over there!" I murmured in a weak voice, conscious, however, within myself, that I was quite well able to do without water and not to murmur in a weak voice. But I was putting on a show, as they say, to preserve decency, though the fit was a real one.
She gave me water, looking at me as if lost. At that moment Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this ordinary and prosaic tea was terribly indecent and measly after all that had happened, and I blushed. Liza looked at Apollon even fearfully. He went out without glancing at us.
"Liza, do you despise me?" I said, looking at her point-blank, trembling with impatience to find out what she thought.
She became embarrassed, and was unable to reply.
"Drink your tea!" I said spitefully. I was angry with myself, but, naturally, she was going to bear the brunt of it. A terrible spite against her suddenly boiled up in my heart; I think I could simply have killed her. To be revenged on her, I swore mentally not to speak even one word to her from then on. "It's she who caused it all," I thought.
Our silence had already lasted some five minutes. The tea sat on the table; we didn't touch it: it went so far that I purposely refused to begin drinking, so as to make it still harder for her; and it would have been awkward for her to begin. Several times she glanced at me in sad perplexity. I was stubbornly silent. The chief martyr, of course, was myself, because I was fully conscious of all the loathsome baseness of my spiteful stupidity, and at the same time I simply could not restrain myself.
"I want… to get out of there… for good," she tried to begin, in order to break the silence somehow, but, poor thing! she precisely ought not to have started with that at such a moment, stupid as it was to begin with, or to such a man, stupid as I was to begin with. Even my heart ached from pity for her ineptness and unnecessary candor. But something ugly immediately suppressed all pity in me; it even egged me on still more: perish the whole world! Another five minutes passed.
"Perhaps I've disturbed you?" she began timidly, in a barely audible voice, and started to get up.
But as soon as I saw this first flash of injured dignity I simply trembled with anger and at once burst out.
"What did you come to me for, do tell me, please?" I began, suffocating, and not even considering the logical order of my words. I wanted to speak everything out at once, in one shot; I didn't even care where I began.
"Why did you come? Answer! Answer!" I kept exclaiming, all but beside myself. "I'll tell you why you came, my dear. You came because of the pathetic words I used with you then. So you went all soft, and you wanted more 'pathetic words.' Know, then, know that I was laughing at you that time. And I'm laughing now. Why do you tremble? Yes, laughing! I'd been insulted earlier, at dinner, by the ones who came there ahead of me. I came there to give a thrashing to one of them, the officer; but I didn't succeed, he wasn't there; I needed to unload my offense on someone, to get my own back, and you turned up, so I poured out my spite and laughed at you. I'd been humiliated, so I, too, wanted to humiliate; they'd ground me down like a rag, so I, too, wanted to show my power… That's what it was, and you thought I came then on purpose to save you, right? That's what you thought? That's what you thought?"
I knew she might perhaps get confused and not understand the details; but I also knew she'd understand the essence perfectly well. And so it happened. She turned white as a sheet, tried to utter something, her mouth twisted painfully; but, as if cut down with an axe, she sank onto the chair. And all the rest of the time she listened to me with open mouth, with wide open eyes, and trembling in terrible fear. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words crushed her…
"To save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running back and forth in front of her, "to save you from what! But maybe I'm worse than you are. Why didn't you fling it in my mug when I started reading you my oration: And you, what did you come here for? To teach us morals, or what?' Power, power, that's what I wanted then, the game was what I wanted, I wanted to achieve your tears, your humiliation, your hysterics – that's what I wanted then! But I couldn't stand it myself, because I'm trash, I got all scared and, like a fool, gave you my address, devil knows why. And afterwards, even before I got home, I was already cursing you up and down for that address. I already hated you, because I'd lied to you then. Because I only talk a good game, I only dream in my head, but do you know what I want in reality? That you all go to hell, that's what! I want peace. I'd sell the whole world for a kopeck this minute, just not to be bothered. Shall the world go to hell, or shall I not have my tea? I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. Did you know that or not? Well, and I do know that I'm a blackguard, a scoundrel, a self-lover, a lazybones. I spent these past three days trembling for fear you might come. And do you know what particularly bothered me all these three days? That I had presented myself to you as such a hero then, and now you'd suddenly see me in this torn old dressing gown, abject, vile. I just told you I was not ashamed of my poverty, know, then, that I am ashamed, I'm ashamed of it most of all, afraid of it more than anything, more than of being a thief, because I'm so vain it's as if I'd been flayed and the very air hurts me. But can you possibly not have realized even now that I will never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing gown, as I was hurling myself like a vicious little cur at Apollon? The resurrector, the former hero, flinging himself like a mangy, shaggy mutt at his lackey, who just laughs at him! And those tears a moment ago, which, like an ashamed woman, I couldn't hold back before you, I will never forgive you! And what I'm confessing to you now, I will also never forgive you! Yes – you, you alone must answer for all this, because you turned up here, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the most vile, the most ridiculous, the most petty, the most stupid, the most envious of all worms on earth, who are in no way better than I, but who, devil knows why, are never embarrassed; while I will just go on being flicked all my life by every nit – that's my trait! Besides, what do I care if you won't understand a word of it! And what, tell me, what, what do I care about you and whether you're perishing there or not? Do you understand, now that I've spoken it all out to you, how I'm going to hate you for being here and listening? Because a man speaks out like this only once in his life, and then only in hysterics!… What more do you want? Why, after all this, do you still stick there in front of me, tormenting me, refusing to leave?"
But here a strange circumstance suddenly occurred.
I was so used to thinking and imagining everything from books, and to picturing everything in the world to myself as I had devised it beforehand in my dreams, that at first I didn't even understand this strange circumstance. What occurred was this: Liza, whom I had insulted and crushed, understood far more than I imagined. She understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else – namely, that I myself was unhappy.
The frightened and insulted feeling in her face first gave way to rueful amazement. And when I began calling myself a scoundrel and a blackguard, and my tears poured down (I had spoken the entire tirade in tears), her whole face twisted in a sort of convulsion. She wanted to get up, to stop me; and when I came to the end, she paid no attention to my cries: "Why are you here, why don't you leave!" but only to how very hard it must have been for me to speak it all out. Besides, she was so downtrodden, poor thing; she considered herself infinitely beneath me; how could she be angry or offended? She suddenly jumped from her chair on some irrepressible impulse, and, all yearning towards me, but still timidly, not daring to move from the spot, stretched out her arms to me… Here my heart, too, turned over in me. Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms about my neck, and burst into tears. I, too, could not help myself and broke into such sobbing as had never happened to me before…
"They won't let me… I can't be… good!" I barely articulated, then went to the sofa, fell face down, and sobbed for a quarter of an hour in real hysterics. She leaned towards me, embraced me, and remained as if frozen in that embrace.
But still, the hitch was that the hysterics did have to end. And so (I am writing the loathsome truth), lying prone on the sofa, my face buried hard in the wretched leather cushion, I began little by little, remotely, involuntarily, but irresistibly, to feel that it would be awkward now to raise my head and look straight into Liza's eyes. What was I ashamed of? I don't know, but I was ashamed. It also came into my agitated head that the roles were now finally reversed, that she was now the heroine, and I was the same crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night – four days ago… And all this came to me during those minutes when I was still lying prone on the sofa!
My God! but can it be that I envied her then?
I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and then, of course, I was even less able to understand it than now. For without power and tyranny over someone, I really cannot live… But… but reasoning explains nothing, and consequently there's no point in reasoning.
I mastered myself, however, and raised my head; indeed, I had to raise it sometime… And then – I am convinced of it even to this day – precisely because I was ashamed to look at her, another feeling suddenly kindled and flared up in my heart… the feeling of domination and possession. My eyes gleamed with passion, and I squeezed her hands hard. How I hated her and how drawn I was to her at that moment! One feeling intensified the other. This was almost like revenge!… At first, a look as if of perplexity, even as if of fear, came to her face, but only for a moment. She embraced me rapturously and ardently.
X
A quarter of an hour later I was running up and down my room in furious impatience, going to the screen every other minute and peeking at Liza through a crack. She was sitting on the floor, her head leaning against the bed, and was probably crying. But she wouldn't leave, and that was what irritated me. This time she knew everything. I had given her the final insult, but… no use talking about it. She guessed that my burst of passion was precisely revenge, a new humiliation for her, and that to my previous, almost pointless hatred there had now been added a personal, envious hatred of her… I do not insist, by the way, that she understood it all clearly; but on the other hand she fully understood that I was a loathsome man and, above all, incapable of loving her.
I know I shall be told that all this is inconceivable, that it is inconceivable to be as wicked, as stupid, as I was; perhaps it will also be added that it was inconceivable not to love her, or at least not to appreciate her love. But why inconceivable? First, I was no longer able to love, because, I repeat, for me to love meant to tyrannize and to preponderize morally All my life I've been incapable even of picturing any other love, and I've reached the point now of sometimes thinking that love consists precisely in the right, voluntarily granted by the beloved object, to be tyrannized over. In my underground dreams as well, I never pictured love to myself otherwise than as a struggle; for me it always started from hatred and ended with moral subjugation, and afterwards I couldn't even picture to myself what to do with the subjugated object. And how is it inconceivable, if I had managed so to corrupt myself morally, had grown so unaccustomed to "living life," that I had dared just before to reproach and shame her for coming to me to hear "pathetic words"; and I myself never guessed that she had come to me not at all to hear pathetic words, but to love me, because for a woman it is in love that all resurrection, all salvation from ruin of whatever sort, and all regeneration consists, nor can it reveal itself in anything else but this. However, I did not hate her all that much as I was running about my room and peeking behind the screen through a crack. I simply felt it unbearably burdensome that she was there. I wanted her to disappear. I longed for "peace," I longed to be left alone in the underground. "Living life" so crushed me, unaccustomed to it as I was, that it even became difficult for me to breathe.
But several more minutes passed and she still did not get up, as if she were oblivious. I was shameless enough to tap softly on the screen to remind her… She suddenly roused herself, started up from her place, and rushed to look for her scarf, her hat, her fur coat, as if to escape from me somewhere… Two minutes later she came slowly from behind the screen and gave me a heavy look. I grinned spitefully, though forcedly, for decency's sake, and turned away from her look.
"Good-bye," she said, making for the door.
I suddenly ran to her, seized her hand, opened it, put… and closed it again. Then I turned at once and quickly sprang away to the opposite corner, so as at least not to see…
I was going to lie right now – to write that I did it accidentally, in distraction, at a loss, out of foolishness. But I don't want to lie, and so I'll say directly that I opened her hand and put… in it out of malice. The thought of doing it occurred to me while I was running up and down my room and she was sitting behind the screen. But this much I can say with certainty: although I did this cruelty on purpose, it came not from my heart, but from my stupid head. This cruelty was so affected, so much from the head, so purposely contrived, so bookish, that I myself could not bear it even for a minute – first I sprang away to the corner so as not to see, then in shame and despair I rushed after Liza. I opened the door to the landing and began to listen.
"Liza! Liza!" I called out to the stairway, but timidly, in a low voice…
There was no answer; I thought I could hear her footsteps down below.
"Liza!" I called more loudly.
No answer. But at that moment I heard from below the tight glass outer door to the street creak open heavily and slam tightly shut again. The bang echoed up the stairway.
She was gone. I went back to my room, pondering. I felt terribly heavy.
I stopped by the table next to the chair on which she had been sitting, and stared senselessly before me. About a minute passed; suddenly I gave a great start: there before me, on the table, I saw… in short, I saw a crumpled blue five-rouble bill, the very one I had pressed into her hand a moment before. It was that bill; it couldn't have been any other; there wasn't any other in the house. So she had managed to fling it from her hand onto the table just as I jumped away to the opposite corner.
Well, then? I could have expected her to do that. Could have expected? No. I was so great an egoist, I had in fact so little respect for people, that I could scarcely imagine she, too, would do that. I couldn't bear it. A second later I rushed like a madman to get dressed, threw on in a flurry whatever I could find, and raced headlong after her. She couldn't have gone more than two hundred steps before I ran out to the street.
It was still, and the snow was falling heavily, almost perpendicularly, laying a pillow over the sidewalk and the deserted roadway. Not a single passer-by, not a sound to be heard. The street-lamps flickered glumly and uselessly. I ran about two hundred steps to the intersection and stopped.
"Where did she go? And why am I running after her? Why? To fall down before her, to weep in repentance, to kiss her feet, to beg forgiveness! I wanted it; my whole breast was tearing apart, and never, never will I recall this moment with indifference. But – why?" came the thought. "Won't I hate her, maybe tomorrow even, precisely for kissing her feet today? Will I bring her happiness? Haven't I learned again today, for the hundredth time, just how much I'm worth? Won't I torment her to death!"
I stood in the snow, peering into the dull darkness, and thought about that.
"And won't it be better, yes, better," I fancied later, back at home, stifling the living pain in my heart with fantasies, "won't it be better if she now carries an insult away with her forever? An insult – but this is purification; it's the most stinging and painful consciousness! By tomorrow I'd have already dirtied her soul with myself and worn out her heart. But now the insult will never die in her, and however vile the dirt that awaits her – the insult will elevate and purify her… through hatred… hm… maybe also forgiveness… Though, by the way, will all that make it any easier for her?" And in fact I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better – cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better?
Such were my reveries as I sat at home that evening, barely alive from the pain in my soul. Never before had I endured so much suffering and repentance; but could there have been even the slightest doubt, as I went running out of the apartment, that I would turn back halfway? Never have I met Liza again, or heard anything about her. I will also add that for a long time I remained pleased with the. phrase about the usefulness of insult and hatred, even though I myself almost became sick then from anguish.
Even now, after so many years, all this comes out somehow none too well in my recollection. Many things come out none too well now in my recollections, but… shouldn't I just end my Notes here? I think it was a mistake to begin writing them. At least I've felt ashamed all the while I've been writing this story: so it's no longer literature, but corrective punishment. Because, for example, to tell long stories of how I defaulted on my life through moral corruption in a corner, through an insufficiency of milieu, through unaccustom to what is alive, and through vainglorious spite in the underground – is not interesting, by God; a novel needs a hero, and here there are purposely collected all the features for an anti-hero, and, in the first place, all this will produce a most unpleasant impression, because we've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less. We've even grown so unaccustomed that at times we feel a sort of loathing for real "living life," and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it. For we've reached a point where we regard real "living life" almost as labor, almost as service, and we all agree in ourselves that it's better from a book. And why do we sometimes fuss about, why these caprices, these demands of ours? We ourselves don't know why. It would be the worse for us if our capricious demands were fulfilled. Go on, try giving us more independence, for example, unbind the hands of any one of us, broaden our range of activity, relax the tutelage, and we… but I assure you: we will immediately beg to be taken back under tutelage. I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "Speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'"
Excuse me, gentlemen, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you. Take a closer look! We don't even know where the living lives now, or what it is, or what it's called! Leave us to ourselves, without a book, and we'll immediately get confused, lost – we won't know what to join, what to hold to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. It's a burden for us even to be men – men with real, our own bodies and blood; we're ashamed of it, we consider it a disgrace, and keep trying to be some unprecedented omni-men. We're stillborn, and have long ceased to be born of living fathers, and we like this more and more. We're acquiring a taste for it. Soon we'll contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write any more "from Underground"…
