VIII
It was some time, however, before I consented to recognise that truth.
Waking up in the morning after some hours of heavy, leaden sleep, and
immediately realising all that had happened on the previous day, I was
positively amazed at my last night's SENTIMENTALITY with Liza, at all those
"outcries of horror and pity." "To think of having such an attack of
womanish hysteria, pah!" I concluded. And what did I thrust my address
upon her for? What if she comes? Let her come, though; it doesn't
matter .... But OBVIOUSLY, that was not now the chief and the most
important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my reputation
in the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible; that was the
chief business. And I was so taken up that morning that I actually forgot
all about Liza.
First of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before
from Simonov. I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen
roubles straight off from Anton Antonitch. As luck would have it he was
in the best of humours that morning, and gave it to me at once, on the
first asking. I was so delighted at this that, as I signed the IOU with a
swaggering air, I told him casually that the night before "I had been
keeping it up with some friends at the Hotel de Paris; we were giving a
farewell party to a comrade, in fact, I might say a friend of my childhood,
and you know--a desperate rake, fearfully spoilt--of course, he belongs
to a good family, and has considerable means, a brilliant career; he is
witty, charming, a regular Lovelace, you understand; we drank an extra
'half-dozen' and ..."
And it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily,
unconstrainedly and complacently.
On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.
To this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly gentlemanly,
good-humoured, candid tone of my letter. With tact and good-
breeding, and, above all, entirely without superfluous words, I blamed
myself for all that had happened. I defended myself, "if I really may be
allowed to defend myself," by alleging that being utterly unaccustomed
to wine, I had been intoxicated with the first glass, which I said, I had
drunk before they arrived, while I was waiting for them at the Hotel de
Paris between five and six o'clock. I begged Simonov's pardon especially;
I asked him to convey my explanations to all the others, especially to
Zverkov, whom "I seemed to remember as though in a dream" I had
insulted. I added that I would have called upon all of them myself, but
my head ached, and besides I had not the face to. I was particularly
pleased with a certain lightness, almost carelessness (strictly within the
bounds of politeness, however), which was apparent in my style, and
better than any possible arguments, gave them at once to understand that
I took rather an independent view of "all that unpleasantness last night";
that I was by no means so utterly crushed as you, my friends, probably
imagine; but on the contrary, looked upon it as a gentleman serenely
respecting himself should look upon it. "On a young hero's past no
censure is cast!"
"There is actually an aristocratic playfulness about it!" I thought
admiringly, as I read over the letter. "And it's all because I am an
intellectual and cultivated man! Another man in my place would not have
known how to extricate himself, but here I have got out of it and am as
jolly as ever again, and all because I am 'a cultivated and educated man
of our day.' And, indeed, perhaps, everything was due to the wine
yesterday. H'm!" ... No, it was not the wine. I did not drink anything at
all between five and six when I was waiting for them. I had lied to
Simonov; I had lied shamelessly; and indeed I wasn't ashamed now ....
Hang it all though, the great thing was that I was rid of it.
I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to take it
to Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter, Apollon
became more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I went out
for a walk. My head was still aching and giddy after yesterday. But as
evening came on and the twilight grew denser, my impressions and,
following them, my thoughts, grew more and more different and confused.
Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and
conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression. For
the most part I jostled my way through the most crowded business streets,
along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy Street and in Yusupov Garden.
I always liked particularly sauntering along these streets in the dusk,
just when there were crowds of working people of all sorts going home
from their daily work, with faces looking cross with anxiety. What I liked
was just that cheap bustle, that bare prose. On this occasion the jostling
of the streets irritated me more than ever, I could not make out what was
wrong with me, I could not find the clue, something seemed rising up
continually in my soul, painfully, and refusing to be appeased. I returned
home completely upset, it was just as though some crime were lying on
my conscience.
The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed
queer to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented me, as
it were, especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything else I had quite
succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it all and was still
perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on this point I was not
satisfied at all. It was as though I were worried only by Liza. "What if she
comes," I thought incessantly, "well, it doesn't matter, let her come!
H'm! it's horrid that she should see, for instance, how I live. Yesterday I
seemed such a hero to her, while now, h'm! It's horrid, though, that I have
let myself go so, the room looks like a beggar's. And I brought myself to go
out to dinner in such a suit! And my American leather sofa with the
stuffing sticking out. And my dressing-gown, which will not cover me,
such tatters, and she will see all this and she will see Apollon. That beast
is certain to insult her. He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me.
And I, of course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing
and scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall
begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn't the
beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more important, more
loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying mask
again! ..."
When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.
"Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night. I
remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to excite
an honourable feeling in her .... Her crying was a good thing, it will
have a good effect."
Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come
back home, even after nine o'clock, when I calculated that Liza could
not possibly come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came
back to my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all that
had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the moment
when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its look
of torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a distorted smile
she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that fifteen years later I
should still in my imagination see Liza, always with the pitiful, distorted,
inappropriate smile which was on her face at that minute.
Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to over-
excited nerves, and, above all, as EXAGGERATED. I was always conscious of
that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of it. "I
exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong," I repeated to myself
every hour. But, however, "Liza will very likely come all the same," was
the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so uneasy that I
sometimes flew into a fury: "She'll come, she is certain to come!" I cried,
running about the room, "if not today, she will come tomorrow; she'll
find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure hearts! Oh, the
vileness--oh, the silliness--oh, the stupidity of these 'wretched sentimental
souls!' Why, how fail to understand? How could one fail to
understand? ..."
But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.
And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how
little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) had
sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my will. That's
virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!
At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, "to tell her all," and
beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me that
I believed I should have crushed that "damned" Liza if she had chanced
to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have spat at her,
have turned her out, have struck her!
One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I
began to grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine
o'clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for
instance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me
and my talking to her .... I develop her, educate her. Finally, I notice
that she loves me, loves me passionately. I pretend not to understand (I
don't know, however, why I pretend, just for effect, perhaps). At last all
confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing, she flings herself at my
feet and says that I am her saviour, and that she loves me better than
anything in the world. I am amazed, but .... "Liza," I say, "can you
imagine that I have not noticed your love? I saw it all, I divined it, but I
did not dare to approach you first, because I had an influence over you and was
afraid that you would force yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my
love, would try to rouse in your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent,
and I did not wish that ... because it would be tyranny ... it would be
indelicate (in short, I launch off at that point into European, inexplicably
lofty subtleties a la George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my
creation, you are pure, you are good, you are my noble wife.
'Into my house come bold and free,
Its rightful mistress there to be'."
Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In fact,
in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out my
tongue at myself.
Besides, they won't let her out, "the hussy!" I thought. They don't let
them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some reason I
fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o'clock precisely).
Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there yet, and had
certain rights; so, h'm! Damn it all, she will come, she is sure to come!
It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at that
time by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was the bane
of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been squabbling
continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated him!
I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him, especially at
some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who worked part of his
time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he despised me beyond all
measure, and looked down upon me insufferably. Though, indeed, he
looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at that flaxen, smoothly
brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his forehead and oiled
with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth, compressed into the shape of
the letter V, made one feel one was confronting a man who never doubted
of himself. He was a pedant, to the most extreme point, the greatest
pedant I had met on earth, and with that had a vanity only befitting
Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with every button on his coat,
every nail on his fingers--absolutely in love with them, and he looked it!
In his behaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me,
and if he chanced to glance at me he gave me a firm, majestically self-
confident and invariably ironical look that drove me sometimes to fury.
He did his work with the air of doing me the greatest favour, though he did
scarcely anything for me, and did not, indeed, consider himself bound to
do anything. There could be no doubt that he looked upon me as the
greatest fool on earth, and that "he did not get rid of me" was simply that he
could get wages from me every month. He consented to do nothing for me
for seven roubles a month. Many sins should be forgiven me for what I
suffered from him. My hatred reached such a point that sometimes his
very step almost threw me into convulsions. What I loathed particularly
was his lisp. His tongue must have been a little too long or something of
that sort, for he continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it,
imagining that it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow, measured
tone, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground. He
maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself
behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading! But he was
awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even, sing-song
voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that that is how he has
ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the dead, and at the
same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at that time I could not get
rid of him, it was as though he were chemically combined with my
existence. Besides, nothing would have induced him to consent to leave
me. I could not live in furnished lodgings: my lodging was my private
solitude, my shell, my cave, in which I concealed myself from all mankind,
and Apollon seemed to me, for some reason, an integral part of that
flat, and for seven years I could not turn him away.
To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was
impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known
where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during
those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some
object to PUNISH Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that
were owing him. I had for a long time--for the last two years--been
intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself airs
with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his wages. I
purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely silent indeed,
in order to score off his pride and force him to be the first to speak of his
wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out of a drawer, show him I
have the money put aside on purpose, but that I won't, I won't, I simply
won't pay him his wages, I won't just because that is "what I wish,"
because "I am master, and it is for me to decide," because he has been
disrespectful, because he has been rude; but if he were to ask respectfully
I might be softened and give it to him, otherwise he might wait another
fortnight, another three weeks, a whole month ....
But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out for
four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there had
been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be observed
I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by heart). He would
begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare, keeping it up for
several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me or seeing me out of
the house. If I held out and pretended not to notice these stares, he
would, still in silence, proceed to further tortures. All at once, A PROPOS of
nothing, he would walk softly and smoothly into my room, when I was
pacing up and down or reading, stand at the door, one hand behind his
back and one foot behind the other, and fix upon me a stare more than
severe, utterly contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what he wanted,
he would make me no answer, but continue staring at me persistently for
some seconds, then, with a peculiar compression of his lips and a most
significant air, deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his
room. Two hours later he would come out again and again present
himself before me in the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did
not even ask him what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and
imperiously and began staring back at him. So we stared at one another
for two minutes; at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went
back again for two hours.
If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my
revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,
deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral degradation,
and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing completely: I
raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he wanted.
This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost
my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance
apart from him.
"Stay," I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning, with
one hand behind his back, to go to his room. "Stay! Come back, come
back, I tell you!" and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he turned
round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he persisted in
saying nothing, and that infuriated me.
"How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?
Answer!"
After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning
round again.
"Stay!" I roared, running up to him, "don't stir! There. Answer, now:
what did you come in to look at?"
"If you have any order to give me it's my duty to carry it out," he
answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp, raising
his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to another, all
this with exasperating composure.
"That's not what I am asking you about, you torturer!" I shouted,
turning crimson with anger. "I'll tell you why you came here myself: you
see, I don't give you your wages, you are so proud you don't want to bow
down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your stupid
stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it is--
stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! ..."
He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.
"Listen," I shouted to him. "Here's the money, do you see, here it is," (I
took it out of the table drawer); "here's the seven roubles complete, but
you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ... going ... to ...
have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to beg my pardon.
Do you hear?"
"That cannot be," he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.
"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word of honour, it shall be!"
"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for," he went on, as
though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. "Why, besides, you
called me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you at the police-station
at any time for insulting behaviour."
"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this very minute, this very
second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!"
But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud
calls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without
looking round.
"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened," I
decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind his
screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating
slowly and violently.
"Apollon," I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless,
"go at once without a minute's delay and fetch the police-officer."
He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles
and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a guffaw.
"At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can't imagine what
will happen."
"You are certainly out of your mind," he observed, without even
raising his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.
"Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as
for being frightened--you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for
nothing will come of it."
"Go!" I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should strike
him in a minute.
But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open at
that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at us in
perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back to my
room. There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my head
against the wall and stood motionless in that position.
Two minutes later I heard Apollon's deliberate footsteps. "There is
some woman asking for you," he said, looking at me with peculiar
severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away, but
stared at us sarcastically.
"Go away, go away," I commanded in desperation. At that moment my
clock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.
