II
The words and events of that evening must have
been graven as if with a steel tool on Mr.
Razumov's brain since he was able to write his
relation with such fullness and precision a good
many months afterwards.
The record of the thoughts which assailed him in
the street is even more minute and abundant.
They seem to have rushed upon him with the
greater freedom because his thinking powers were
no longer crushed by Haldin's presence--the
appalling presence of a great crime and the
stunning force of a great fanaticism. On
looking through the pages of Mr. Razumov's diary
I own that a "rush of thoughts" is not an
adequate image.
The more adequate description would be a tumult
of thoughts--the faithful reflection of the
state of his feelings. The thoughts in
themselves were not numerous--they were like the
thoughts of most human beings, few and simple--
but they cannot be reproduced here in all their
exclamatory repetitions which went on in an
endless and weary turmoil--for the walk was long.
If to the Western reader they appear shocking,
inappropriate, or even improper, it must be
remembered that as to the first this may be the
effect of my crude statement. For the rest I
will only remark here that this is not a story
of the West of Europe.
Nations it may be have fashioned their
Governments, but the Governments have paid them
back in the same coin. It is unthinkable that
any young Englishman should find himself in
Razumov's situation. This being so it would be
a vain enterprise to imagine what he would
think. The only safe surmise to make is that he
would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this
crisis of his fate. He would not have an
hereditary and personal knowledge or the means
by which historical autocracy represses ideas,
guards its power, and defends its existence. By
an act of mental extravagance he might imagine
himself arbitrarily thrown into prison, but it
would never occur to him unless he were
delirious (and perhaps not even then) that he
could be beaten with whips as a practical
measure either of investigation or of punishment.
This is but a crude and obvious example of the
different conditions of Western thought. I
don't know that this danger occurred, specially,
to Mr. Razumov. No doubt it entered
unconsciously into the general dread and the
general appallingness of this crisis. Razumov,
as has been seen, was aware of more subtle ways
in which an individual may be undone by the
proceedings of a despotic Government. A simple
expulsion from the University (the very least
that could happen to him), with an impossibility
to continue his studies anywhere, was enough to
ruin utterly a young man depending entirely upon
the development of his natural abilities for his
place in the world. He was a Russian: and for
him to be implicated meant simply sinking into
the lowest social depths amongst the hopeless
and the destitute--the night birds of the city.
The peculiar circumstances of Razumov's
parentage, or rather of his lack of parentage,
should be taken into the account of his
thoughts. And he remembered them too. He had
been lately reminded of them in a peculiarly
atrocious way by this fatal Haldin. "Because I
haven't that, must everything else be taken away
from me?" he thought.
He nerved himself for another effort to go on.
Along the roadway sledges glided phantom-like
and jingling through a fluttering whiteness on
the black face of the night. "For it is a
crime," he was saying to himself. "A murder is
a murder. Though, of course, some sort of
liberal institutions. . . ."
A feeling of horrible sickness came over him.
"I must be courageous," he exhorted himself
mentally. All his strength was suddenly gone as
if taken out by a hand. Then by a mighty effort
of will it came back because he was afraid of
fainting in the street and being picked up by
the police with the key of his lodgings in his
pocket. They would find Haldin there, and then,
indeed, he would be undone.
Strangely enough it was this fear which seems to
have kept him up to the end. The passers-by
were rare. They came upon him suddenly, looming
up black in the snowflakes close by, then
vanishing all at once-without footfalls.
It was the quarter of the very poor. Razumov
noticed an elderly woman tied up in ragged
shawls. Under the street lamp she seemed a
beggar off duty. She walked leisurely in the
blizzard as though she had no home to hurry to,
she hugged under one arm a round loaf of black
bread with an air of guarding a priceless booty:
and Razumov averting his glance envied her the
peace of her mind and the serenity of her fate.
To one reading Mr. Razumov's narrative it is
really a wonder how he managed to keep going as
he did along one interminable street after
another on pavements that were gradually
becoming blocked with snow. It was the thought
of Haldin locked up in his rooms and the
desperate desire to get rid of his presence
which drove him forward. No rational
determination had any part in his exertions.
Thus, when on arriving at the low eating-house
he heard that the man of horses, Ziemianitch,
was not there, he could only stare stupidly.
The waiter, a wild-haired youth in tarred boots
and a pink shirt, exclaimed, uncovering his pale
gums in a silly grin, that Ziemianitch had got
his skinful early in the afternoon and had gone
away with a bottle under each arm to keep it up
amongst the horses--he supposed.
The owner of the vile den, a bony short man in a
dirty cloth caftan coming down to his heels,
stood by, his hands tucked into his belt, and
nodded confirmation.
The reek of spirits, the greasy rancid steam of
food got Razumov by the throat. He struck a
table with his clenched hand and shouted
violently--
"You lie."
Bleary unwashed faces were turned to his
direction. A mild-eyed ragged tramp drinking
tea at the next table moved farther away. A
murmur of wonder arose with an undertone of
uneasiness. A laugh was heard too, and an
exclamation, "There! there!" jeeringly soothing.
The waiter looked all round and announced to
the room--
"The gentleman won't believe that Ziemianitch is
drunk."
>From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging
to a horrible, nondescript, shaggy being with a
black face like the muzzle of a bear grunted
angrily--
"The cursed driver of thieves. What do we want
with his gentlemen here? We are all honest folk
in this place."
Razumov, biting his lip till blood came to keep
himself from bursting into imprecations,
followed the owner of the den, who, whispering
"Come along, little father," led him into a tiny
hole of a place behind the wooden counter,
whence proceeded a sound of splashing. A wet
and bedraggled creature, a sort of sexless and
shivering scarecrow, washed glasses in there,
bending over a wooden tub by the light of a
tallow dip.
"Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan
said plaintively. He had a brown, cunning
little face, a thin greyish beard. Trying to
light a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast
and talked garrulously the while.
He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to
prove there were no lies told. And he would
show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away
from him last night. "Such a hag she was!
Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They were always
running away from that driver of the devil--and
he sixty years old too; could never get used to
it. But each heart knows sorrow after its own
kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his
days. And then he would fly to the bottle.
"'Who could bear life in our land without the
bottle?' he says. A proper Russian man--the
little pig. . . . Be pleased to follow me."
Razumov crossed a quadrangle of deep snow
enclosed between high walls with innumerable
windows. Here and there a dim yellow light hung
within the four-square mass of darkness. The
house was an enormous slum, a hive of human
vermin, a monumental abode of misery towering on
the verge of starvation and despair.
In a corner the ground sloped sharply down, and
Razumov followed the light of the lantern
through a small doorway into a long cavernous
place like a neglected subterranean byre. Deep
within, three shaggy little horses tied up to
rings hung their heads together, motionless and
shadowy in the dim light of the lantern. It
must have been the famous team of Haldin's
escape. Razumov peered fearfully into the
gloom. His guide pawed in the straw with his
foot.
"Here he is. Ah! the little pigeon. A true
Russian man. 'No heavy hearts for me,' he says.
'Bring out the bottle and take your ugly mug
out of my sight.' Ha! ha! ha! That's the fellow
he is."
He held the lantern over a prone form of a man,
apparently fully dressed for outdoors. His head
was lost in a pointed cloth hood. On the other
side of a heap of straw protruded a pair of feet
in monstrous thick boots.
" Always ready to drive," commented the keeper
of the eating-house. "A proper Russian driver
that. Saint or devil, night or day is all one
to Ziemianitch when his heart is free from
sorrow. 'I don't ask who you are, but where you
want to go,' he says. He would drive Satan
himself to his own abode and come back
chirruping to his horses. Many a one he has
driven who is clanking his chains in the
Nertchinsk mines by this time."
Razumov shuddered.
"Call him, wake him up," he faltered out.
The other set down his light, stepped back and
launched a kick at the prostrate sleeper. The
man shook at the impact but did not move. At
the third kick he grunted but remained inert as
before.
The eating-house keeper desisted and fetched a
deep sigh.
"You see for yourself how it is. We have done
what we can for you."
He picked up the lantern. The intense black
spokes of shadow swung about in the circle of
light. A terrible fury--the blind rage of self-
preservation--possessed Razumov.
" Ah! The vile beast," he bellowed out in an
unearthly tone which made the lantern jump and
tremble! "I shall wake you! Give me . . .give
me . . ."
He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a
stablefork and rushing forward struck at the
prostrate body with inarticulate cries. After a
time his cries ceased, and the rain of blows
fell in the stillness and shadows of the cellar-
like stable. Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch
with an insatiable fury, in great volleys of
sounding thwacks. Except for the violent
movements of Razumov nothing stirred, neither
the beaten man nor the spoke-like shadows on the
walls. And only the sound of blows was heard.
It was a weird scene.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack. The stick
broke and half of it flew far away into the
gloom beyond the light. At the same time
Ziemianitch sat up. At this Razumov became as
motionless as the man with the lantern--only his
breast heaved for air as if ready to burst.
Some dull sensation of pain must have penetrated
at last the consoling night of drunkenness
enwrapping the "bright Russian soul" of Haldin's
enthusiastic praise. But Ziemianitch evidently
saw nothing. His eyeballs blinked all white in
the light once, twice--then the gleam went out.
For a moment he sat in the straw with closed
eyes with a strange air of weary meditation,
then fell over slowly on his side without making
the slightest sound. Only the straw rustled a
little. Razumov stared wildly, fighting for his
breath. After a second or two he heard a light
snore.
He flung from him the piece of stick remaining
in his grasp, and went off with great hasty
strides without looking back once.
After going heedlessly for some fifty yards
along the street he walked into a snowdrift and
was up to his knees before he stopped.
This recalled him to himself; and glancing about
he discovered he had been going in the wrong
direction. He retraced his steps, but now at a
more moderate pace. When passing before the
house he had just left he flourished his fist at
the sombre refuge of misery and crime rearing
its sinister bulk on the white ground. It had
an air of brooding. He let his arm fall by his
side--discouraged.
Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and
consolation had baffled him. That was the
people. A true Russian man! Razumov was glad
he had beaten that brute--the "bright soul" of
the other. Here they were: the people and the
enthusiast.
Between the two he was done for. Between the
drunkenness of the peasant incapable of action
and the dream-intoxication of the idealist
incapable of perceiving the reason of things,
and the true character of men. It was a sort of
terrible childishness. But children had their
masters. "Ah! the stick, the stick, the stern
hand," thought Razumov, longing for power to
hurt and destroy.
He was glad he had thrashed that brute. The
physical exertion had left his body in a
comfortable glow. His mental agitation too was
clarified as if all the feverishness had gone
out of him in a fit of outward violence.
Together with the persisting sense of terrible
danger he was conscious now of a tranquil,
unquenchable hate.
He walked slower and slower. And indeed,
considering the guest he had in his rooms, it
was no wonder he lingered on the way. It was
like harbouring a pestilential disease that
would not perhaps take your life, but would take
from you all that made life worth living--a
subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell.
What was he doing now? Lying on the bed as if
dead, with the back of his hands over his eyes ?
Razumov had a morbidly vivid vision of Haldin
on his bed--the white pillow hollowed by the
head, the legs in long boots, the upturned feet.
And in his abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll
kill him when I get home." But he knew very
well that that was of no use. The corpse
hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal
as the living man. Nothing short of complete
annihilation would do. And that was impossible.
What then? Must one kill oneself to escape
this visitation ?
Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with
hate to accept that issue.
And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the
thought of having to live with Haldin for an
indefinite number of days in mortal alarm at
every sound. But perhaps when he heard that
this "bright soul" of Ziemianitch suffered from
a drunken eclipse the fellow would take his
infernal resignation somewhere else. And that
was not likely on the face of it.
Razumov thought: "I am being crushed--and I
can't even run away." Other men had somewhere a
corner of the earth--some little house in the
provinces where they had a right to take their
troubles. A material refuge. He had nothing.
He had not even a moral refuge--the refuge of
confidence. To whom could he go with this tale--
in all this great, great land?
Razumov stamped his foot--and under the soft
carpet of snow felt the hard ground of Russia,
inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen and tragic
mother hiding her face under a winding-sheet--
his native soil!--his very own--without a
fireside, without a heart!
He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The
snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a
miracle, he saw above his head the clear black
sky of the northern winter, decorated with the
sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy
fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.
Razumov received an almost physical impression
of endless space and of countless millions.
He responded to it with the readiness of a
Russian who is born to an inheritance of space
and numbers. Under the sumptuous immensity of
the sky, the snow covered the endless forests,
the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense
country, obliterating the landmarks, the
accidents of the ground, levelling everything
under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous
blank page awaiting the record of an
inconceivable history. It covered the passive
land with its lives of countless people like
Ziemianitch and its handful of agitators like
this Haldin--murdering foolishly.
It was a sort of sacred inertia. Razumov felt a
respect for it. A voice seemed to cry within
him, "Don't touch it." It was a guarantee of
duration, of safety, while the travail of
maturing destiny went on--a work not of
revolutions with their passionate levity of
action and their shifting impulses--but of
peace. What it needed was not the conflicting
aspirations of a people, but a will strong and
one: it wanted not the babble of many voices,
but a man--strong and one!
Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He
was fascinated by its approach, by its
overpowering logic. For a train of thought is
never false. The falsehood lies deep in the
necessities of existence, in secret fears and
half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence
combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in
the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days.
In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and
disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have
turned away at last from the vain and endless
conflict to the one great historical fact of the
land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of
their patriotic conscience as a weary
unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith
of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual
rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov,
in conflict with himself, felt the touch of
grace upon his forehead.
"Haldin means disruption," he thought to
himself, beginning to walk again. " What is he
with his indignation, with his talk of bondage--
with his talk of God's justice? All that means
disruption. Better that thousands should suffer
than that a people should become a disintegrated
mass, helpless like dust in the wind.
Obscurantism is better than the light of
incendiary torches. The seed germinates in the
night. Out of the dark soil springs the perfect
plant. But a volcanic eruption is sterile, the
ruin of the fertile ground. And am I, who love
my country--who have nothing but that to love
and put my faith in--am I to have my future,
perhaps my usefulness, ruined by this sanguinary
fanatic?"
The grace entered into Razumov. He believed now
in the man who would come at the appointed time.
What is a throne? A few pieces of wood
upholstered in velvet. But a throne is a seat
of power too. The form of government is the
shape of a tool--an instrument. But twenty
thousand bladders inflated by the noblest
sentiments and jostling against each other in
the air are a miserable incumbrance of space,
holding no power, possessing no will, having
nothing to give.
He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a
discourse with himself with extraordinary
abundance and facility. Generally his phrases
came to him slowly, after a conscious and
painstaking wooing. Some superior power had
inspired him with a flow of masterly argument as
certain converted sinners become overwhelmingly
loquacious.
He felt an austere exultation.
"What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that
fellow to the clear grasp of my intellect?" he
thought. "Is not this my country? Have I not
got forty million brothers?" he asked himself,
unanswerably victorious in the silence of his
breast. And the fearful thrashing he had given
the inanimate Ziemianitch seemed to him a sign
of intimate union, a pathetically severe
necessity of brotherly love. "No! If I must
suffer let me at least suffer for my
convictions, not for a crime my reason--my cool
superior reason--rejects."
He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in
his breast was complete. But he felt a
suspicious uneasiness, such as we may experience
when we enter an unlighted strange place--the
irrational feeling that something may jump upon
us in the dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.
Of course he was far from being a moss-grown
reactionary. Everything was not for the best.
Despotic bureaucracy. . . abuses. . .
corruption. . . and so on. Capable men were
wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted
hearts. But absolute power should be preserved--
the tool ready for the man--for the great
autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in
him. The logic of history made him unavoidable.
The state of the people demanded him, "What
else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move
all that mass in one direction? Nothing could.
Nothing but a single will."
He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his
personal longings of liberalism--rejecting the
attractive error for the stern Russian truth.
"That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and
added, "There's no stopping midway on that
road," and then remarked to himself, "I am not a
coward."
And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's
breast. He walked with lowered head, making
room for no one. He walked slowly and his
thoughts returning spoke within him with solemn
slowness.
"What is this Haldin? And what am I? Only two
grains of sand. But a great mountain is made up
of just such insignificant grains. And the
death of a man or of many men is an
insignificant thing. Yet we combat a contagious
pestilence. Do I want his death? No! I would
save him if I could--but no one can do that--he
is the withered member which must be cut off.
If I must perish through him, let me at least
not perish with him, and associated against my
will with his sombre folly that understands
nothing either of men or things. Why should I
leave a false memory?"
It passed through his mind that there was no one
in the world who cared what sort of memory he
left behind him. He exclaimed to himself
instantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood! . . .
What a miserable fate!"
He was now in a more animated part of the town.
He did not remark the crash of two colliding
sledges close to the curb. The driver of one
bellowed tearfully at his fellow-
" Oh, thou vile wretch!"
This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear,
disturbed Razumov. He shook his head
impatiently and went on looking straight before
him. Suddenly on the snow, stretched on his
back right across his path, he saw Haldin,
solid, distinct, real, with his inverted hands
over his eyes, clad in a brown close-fitting
coat and long boots. He was lying out of the
way a little, as though he had selected that
place on purpose. The snow round him was
untrodden.
This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect
that the first movement of Razumov was to reach
for his pocket to assure himself that the key of
his rooms was there. But he checked the impulse
with a disdainful curve of his lips. He
understood. His thought, concentrated intensely
on the figure left lying on his bed, had
culminated in this extraordinary illusion of the
sight. Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly.
With a stern face, without a check and gazing
far beyond the vision, he walked on,
experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of
the chest. After passing he turned his head for
a glance, and saw only the unbroken track of his
footsteps over the place where the breast of the
phantom had been lying.
Razumov walked on and after a little time
whispered his wonder to himself.
"Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And
right in my way too! I have had an
extraordinary experience."
He made a few steps and muttered through his set
teeth--
"I shall give him up."
Then for some twenty yards or more all was
blank. He wrapped his cloak closer round him.
He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.
"Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They
talk of a man betraying his country, his
friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral
bond first. All a man can betray is his
conscience. And how is my conscience engaged
here; by what bond of common faith, of common
conviction, am I obliged to let that fanatical
idiot drag me down with him? On the contrary--
every obligation of true courage is the other
way."
Razumov looked round from under his cap.
"What can the prejudice of the world reproach me
with? Have I provoked his confidence? No!
Have I by a single word, look, or gesture given
him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust
in me? No! It is true that I consented to go
and see his Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to
see him. And I broke a stick on his back too--
the brute."
Something seemed to turn over in his head
bringing uppermost a singularly hard, clear
facet of his brain.
"It would be better, however," he reflected with
a quite different mental accent, "to keep that
circumstance altogether to myself."
He had passed beyond the turn leading to his
lodgings, and had reached a wide and fashionable
street. Some shops were still open, and all the
restaurants. Lights fell on the pavement where
men in expensive fur coats, with here and there
the elegant figure of a woman, walked with an
air of leisure. Razumov looked at them with the
contempt of an austere believer for the
frivolous crowd. It was the world--those
officers, dignitaries, men of fashion,
officials, members of the Yacht Club. The event
of the morning affected them all. What would
they say if they knew what this student in a
cloak was going to do?
"Not one of them is capable of feeling and
thinking as deeply as I can. How many of them
could accomplish an act of conscience?"
Razumov lingered in the well-lighted street. He
was firmly decided. Indeed, it could hardly be
called a decision. He had simply discovered
what he had meant to do all along. And yet he
felt the need of some other mind's sanction.
With something resembling anguish he said to
himself--
"I want to be understood." The universal
aspiration with all its profound and melancholy
meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongst
eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no
heart to which he could open himself.
The attorney was not to be thought of. He
despised the little agent of chicane too much.
One could not go and lay one's conscience before
the policeman at the corner. Neither was
Razumov anxious to go to the chief of his
district's police--a common-looking person whom
he used to see sometimes in the street in a
shabby uniform and with a smouldering cigarette
stuck to his lower lip. "He would begin by
locking me up most probably. At any rate, he is
certain to get excited and create an awful
commotion," thought Razumov practically
An act of conscience must be done with outward
dignity.
Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice,
for moral support. Who knows what true
loneliness is--not the conventional word, but
the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it
wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs
some memory or some illusion. Now and then a
fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil
for an instant. For an instant only. No human
being could bear a steady view of moral solitude
without going mad.
Razumov had reached that point of vision. To
escape from it he embraced for a whole minute
the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings
and flinging himself on his knees by the side of
the bed with the dark figure stretched on it; to
pour out a full confession in passionate words
that would stir the whole being of that man to
its innermost depths; that would end in embraces
and tears; in an incredible fellowship of souls--
such as the world had never seen. It was
sublime!
Inwardly he wept and trembled already. But to
the casual eyes that were cast upon him he was
aware that he appeared as a tranquil student in
a cloak, out for a leisurely stroll. He noted,
too, the sidelong, brilliant glance of a pretty
woman--with a delicate head, and covered in the
hairy skins of wild beasts down to her feet,
like a frail and beautiful savage--which rested
for a moment with a sort of mocking tenderness
on the deep abstraction of that good-looking
young man.
Suddenly Razumov stood still. The glimpse of a
passing grey whisker, caught and lost in the
same instant, had evoked the complete image of
Prince K---, the man who once had pressed his
hand as no other man had pressed it--a faint but
lingering pressure like a secret sign, like a
half-unwilling caress.
And Razumov marvelled at himself. Why did he
not think of him before!
"A senator, a dignitary, a great personage, the
very man--He!"
A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--
made his knees shake a little. He repressed it
with a new-born austerity. All that sentiment
was pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick
enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted
to the driver--
"to the K--- Palace. Get on--you! Fly!" The
startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites
of his eyes, answered obsequiously--
"I hear, your high Nobility."
It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K--- was
not a man of timid character. On the day of Mr.
de P---'s murder an extreme alarm and
despondency prevailed in the high official
spheres.
Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study,
was told by his alarmed servants that a
mysterious young man had forced his way into the
hall, refused to tell his name and the nature of
his business, and would not move from there till
he had seen his Excellency in private. Instead
of locking himself up and telephoning for the
police, as nine out of ten high personages would
have done that evening, the Prince gave way to
curiosity and came quietly to the door of his
study.
In the hall, the front door standing wide open,
he recognised at once Razumov, pale as death,
his eyes blazing, and surrounded by perplexed
lackeys.
The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even
indignant. But his humane instincts and a
subtle sense of self-respect could not allow him
to let this young man be thrown out into the
street by base menials. He retreated unseen
into his room, and after a little rang his bell.
Razumov heard in the hall an ominously raised
harsh voice saying somewhere far away--
"Show the gentleman in here."
Razumov walked in without a tremor. He felt
himself invulnerable--raised far above the
shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw
the Prince looking at him with black
displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which
he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary
assurance. He was not asked to sit down.
Half an hour later they appeared in the hall
together. The lackeys stood up, and the Prince,
moving with difficulty on his gouty feet, was
helped into his furs. The carriage had been
ordered before. When the great double door was
flung open with a crash, Razumov, who had been
standing silent with a lost gaze but with every
faculty intensely on the alert, heard the
Prince's voice--
"Your arm, young man."
The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards
officer, man of showy missions, experienced in
nothing but the arts of gallant intrigue and
worldly success, had been equally impressed by
the more obvious difficulties of such a
situation and by Razumov's quiet dignity in
stating them.
He had said, "No. Upon the whole I can't
condemn the step you ventured to take by coming
to me with your story. It is not an affair for
police understrappers. The greatest importance
is attached to. . . . Set your mind at rest. I
shall see you through this most extraordinary
and difficult situation."
Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and
Razumov, making a short bow, had said with
deference--
"I have trusted my instinct. A young man having
no claim upon anybody in the world has in an
hour of trial involving his deepest political
convictions turned to an illustrious Russian--
that's all."
The Prince had exclaimed hastily--
"You have done well."
In the carriage--it was a small brougham on
sleigh runners--Razumov broke the silence in a
voice that trembled slightly.
"My gratitude surpasses the greatness of my
presumption."
He gasped, feeling unexpectedly in the dark a
momentary pressure on his arm.
"You have done well," repeated the Prince.
When the carriage stopped the Prince murmured to
Razumov, who had never ventured a single
question--
"The house of General T---."
In the middle of the snow-covered roadway blazed
a great bonfire. Some Cossacks, the bridles of
their horses over the arm, were warming
themselves around. Two sentries stood at the
door, several gendarmes lounged under the great
carriage gateway, and on the first-floor landing
two orderlies rose and stood at attention.
Razumov walked at the Prince's elbow.
A surprising quantity of hot-house plants in
pots cumbered the floor of the ante-room.
Servants came forward. A young man in civilian
clothes arrived hurriedly, was whispered to,
bowed low, and exclaiming zealously, "Certainly--
this minute," fled within somewhere. The Prince
signed to Razumov.
They passed through a suite of reception-rooms
all barely lit and one of them prepared for
dancing. The wife of the General had put off
her party. An atmosphere of consternation
pervaded the place. But the General's own room,
with heavy sombre hangings, two massive desks,
and deep armchairs, had all the lights turned
on. The footman shut the door behind them and
they waited.
There was a coal fire in an English grate;
Razumov had never before seen such a fire; and
the silence of the room was like the silence of
the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the
clock on the mantelpiece made no sound. Filling
a corner, on a black pedestal, stood a quarter-
life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an adolescent
figure, running. The Prince observed in an
undertone-
"Spontini's. 'Flight of Youth.' Exquisite."
"Admirable," assented Razumov faintly.
They said nothing more after this, the Prince
silent with his grand air, Razumov staring at
the statue. He was worried by a sensation
resembling the gnawing of hunger.
He did not turn when he heard an inner door fly
open, and a quick footstep, muffled on the
carpet.
The Prince's voice immediately exclaimed, thick
with excitement--
"We have got him--_ce miserable_. A worthy
young man came to me-- No! It's incredible. .
. ."
Razumov held his breath before the bronze as if
expecting a crash. Behind his back a voice he
had never heard before insisted politely--
"_Asseyez-vous donc_."
The Prince almost shrieked, "_Mais comprenez-
vous, mon cher! L'assassin_! the murderer--we
have got him. . . ."
Razumov spun round. The General's smooth big
cheeks rested on the stiff collar of his
uniform. He must have been already looking at
Razumov, because that last saw the pale blue
eyes fastened on him coldly.
The Prince from a chair waved an impressive hand.
"This is a most honourable young man whom
Providence itself. . . Mr. Razumov."
The General acknowledged the introduction by
frowning at Razumov, who did not make the
slightest movement.
Sitting down before his desk the General
listened with compressed lips. It was
impossible to detect any sign of emotion on his
face.
Razumov watched the immobility of the fleshy
profile. But it lasted only a moment, till the
Prince had finished; and when the General turned
to the providential young man, his florid
complexion, the blue, unbelieving eyes and the
bright white flash of an automatic smile had an
air of jovial, careless cruelty. He expressed
no wonder at the extraordinary story--no
pleasure or excitement--no incredulity either.
He betrayed no sentiment whatever. Only with a
politeness almost deferential suggested that
"the bird might have flown while Mr.--Mr.
Razumov was running about the streets."
Razumov advanced to the middle of the room and
said, "The door is locked and I have the key in
my pocket."
His loathing for the man was intense. It had
come upon him so unawares that he felt he had
not kept it out of his voice. The General
looked up at him thoughtfully, and Razumov
grinned.
All this went over the head of Prince K---
seated in a deep armchair, very tired and
impatient.
"A student called Haldin," said the General
thoughtfully.
Razumov ceased to grin.
"That is his name," he said unnecessarily loud.
" Victor Victorovitch Haldin--a student."
The General shifted his position a little.
"How is he dressed? Would you have the goodness
to tell me?"
Razumov angrily described Haldin's clothing in a
few jerky words. The General stared all the
time, then addressing the Prince--
"We were not without some indications," he said
in French. "A good woman who was in the street
described to us somebody wearing a dress of the
sort as the thrower of the second bomb. We have
detained her at the Secretariat, and every one
in a Tcherkess coat we could lay our hands on
has been brought to her to look at. She kept on
crossing herself and shaking her head at them.
It was exasperating. . . . "He turned to
Razumov, and in Russian, with friendly reproach--
"Take a chair, Mr. Razumov--do. Why are you
standing? "
Razumov sat down carelessly and looked at the
General.
"This goggle-eyed imbecile understands nothing,"
he thought.
The Prince began to speak loftily.
"Mr. Razumov is a young man of conspicuous
abilities. I have it at heart that his future
should not. . . ."
"Certainly," interrupted the General, with a
movement of the hand. "Has he any weapons on
him, do you think, Mr. Razumov? "
The General employed a gentle musical voice.
Razumov answered with suppressed irritation--
"No. But my razors are lying about--you
understand."
The General lowered his head approvingly.
"Precisely."
Then to the Prince, explaining courteously--
"We want that bird alive. It will be the devil
if we can't make him sing a little before we are
done with him."
The grave-like silence of the room with its mute
clock fell upon the polite modulations of this
terrible phrase. The Prince, hidden in the
chair, made no sound.
The General unexpectedly developed a thought.
"Fidelity to menaced institutions on which
depend the safety of a throne and of a people is
no child's play. We know that, _mon Prince,_
and--_tenez_--"he went on with a sort of
flattering harshness, "Mr. Razumov here begins
to understand that too."
His eyes which he turned upon Razumov seemed to
be starting out of his head. This grotesqueness
of aspect no longer shocked Razumov. He said
with gloomy conviction--
"Haldin will never speak."
"That remains to be seen," muttered the General.
"I am certain," insisted Razumov. "A man like
this never speaks. . . . Do you imagine that I
am here from fear?" he added violently. He felt
ready to stand by his opinion of Haldin to the
last extremity.
"Certainly not," protested the General, with
great simplicity of tone. "And I don't mind
telling you, Mr. Razumov, that if he had not
come with his tale to such a staunch and loyal
Russian as you, he would have disappeared like a
stone in the water . . . which would have had a
detestable effect," he added, with a bright,
cruel smile under his stony stare. "So you see,
there can be no suspicion of any fear here."
The Prince intervened, looking at Razumov round
the back of the armchair.
"Nobody doubts the moral soundness of your
action. Be at ease in that respect, pray."
He turned to the General uneasily.
"That's why I am here. You may be surprised why
I should . . . ."
The General hastened to interrupt.
"Not at all. Extremely natural. You saw the
importance. . . ."
"Yes," broke in the Prince. "And I venture to
ask insistently that mine and Mr. Razumov's
intervention should not become public. He is a
young man of promise--of remarkable aptitudes."
"I haven't a doubt of it," murmured the General.
"He inspires confidence."
"All sorts of pernicious views are so widespread
nowadays--they taint such unexpected quarters--
that, monstrous as it seems, he might suffer. .
. his studies. . . his. . ."
The General, with his elbows on the desk, took
his head between his hands.
"Yes. Yes. I am thinking it out. . . . How
long is it since you left him at your rooms, Mr.
Razumov?"
Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly
corresponded with the time of his distracted
flight from the big slum house. He had made up
his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair
completely. To mention him at all would mean
imprisonment for the "bright soul," perhaps
cruel floggings, and in the end a journey to
Siberia in chains. Razumov, who had beaten
Ziemianitch, felt for him now a vague,
remorseful tenderness.
The General, giving way for the first time to
his secret sentiments, exclaimed contemptuously--
"And you say he came in to make you this
confidence like this--for nothing--_a propos des
bottes_."
Razumov felt danger in the air. The merciless
suspicion of despotism had spoken openly at
last. Sudden fear sealed Razumov's lips. The
silence of the room resembled now the silence of
a deep dungeon, where time does not count, and a
suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever.
But the Prince came to the rescue.
"Providence itself has led the wretch in a
moment of mental aberration to seek Mr. Razumov
on the strength of some old, utterly
misinterpreted exchange of ideas--some sort of
idle speculative conversation--months ago--I am
told--and completely forgotten till now by Mr.
Razumov."
"Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively,
after a short silence, "do you often indulge in
speculative conversation?"
"No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a
sudden access of self-confidence. "I am a man
of deep convictions. Crude opinions are in the
air. They are not always worth combating. But
even the silent contempt of a serious mind may
be misinterpreted by headlong utopists."
The General stared from between his hands.
Prince K--- murmured--
"A serious young man. _Un esprit superieur_."
"I see that, _mon cher Prince_," said the
General. "Mr. Razumov is quite safe with me. I
am interested in him. He has, it seems, the
great and useful quality of inspiring
confidence. What I was wondering at is why the
other should mention anything at all--I mean
even the bare fact alone--if his object was only
to obtain temporary shelter for a few hours.
For, after all, nothing was easier than to say
nothing about it unless, indeed, he were trying,
under a crazy misapprehension of your true
sentiments, to enlist your assistance--eh, Mr.
Razumov?"
It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving
slightly. This grotesque man in a tight uniform
was terrible. It was right that he should be
terrible.
"I can see what your Excellency has in your
mind. But I can only answer that I don't know
why."
"I have nothing in my mind," murmured the
General, with gentle surprise.
"I am his prey--his helpless prey," thought
Razumov. The fatigues and the disgusts of that
afternoon, the need to forget, the fear which he
could not keep off, reawakened his hate for
Haldin.
"Then I can't help your Excellency. I don't
know what he meant. I only know there was a
moment when I wished to kill him. There was
also a moment when I wished myself dead. I said
nothing. I was overcome. I provoked no
confidence--I asked for no explanations--"
Razumov seemed beside himself; but his mind was
lucid. It was really a calculated outburst.
"It is rather a pity," the General said, "that
you did not. Don't you know at all what he
means to do?" Razumov calmed down and saw an
opening there.
"He told me he was in hopes that a sledge would
meet him about half an hour after midnight at
the seventh lamp-post on the left from the upper
end of Karabelnaya. At any rate, he meant to be
there at that time. He did not even ask me for
a change of clothes."
"_Ah voila_!" said the General, turning to
Prince K with an air of satisfaction. "There is
a way to keep your _protege_, Mr. Razumov, quite
clear of any connexion with the actual arrest.
We shall be ready for that gentleman in
Karabelnaya."
The Prince expressed his gratitude. There was
real emotion in his voice. Razumov, motionless,
silent, sat staring at the carpet. The General
turned to him.
"Half an hour after midnight. Till then we have
to depend on you, Mr. Razumov. You don't think
he is likely to change his purpose?"
"How can I tell?" said Razumov. "Those men are
not of the sort that ever changes its purpose."
" What men do you mean?"
"Fanatical lovers of liberty in general.
Liberty with a capital L, Excellency. Liberty
that means nothing precise. Liberty in whose
name crimes are committed."
The General murmured--
"I detest rebels of every kind. I can't help
it. It's my nature!"
He clenched a fist and shook it, drawing back
his arm. "They shall be destroyed, then."
"They have made a sacrifice of their lives
beforehand," said Razumov with malicious
pleasure and looking the General straight in the
face. "If Haldin does change his purpose to-
night, you may depend on it that it will not be
to save his life by flight in some other way.
He would have thought then of something else to
attempt. But that is not likely."
The General repeated as if to himself, "They
shall be destroyed."
Razumov assumed an impenetrable expression.
The Prince exclaimed--
"What a terrible necessity!"
The General's arm was lowered slowly.
"One comfort there is. That brood leaves no
posterity. I've always said it, one effort,
pitiless, persistent, steady--and we are done
with them for ever."
Razumov thought to himself that this man
entrusted with so much arbitrary power must have
believed what he said or else he could not have
gone on bearing the responsibility.
"I detest rebels. These subversive minds!
These intellectual _debauches_! My existence
has been built on fidelity. It's a feeling. To
defend it I am ready to lay down my life--and
even my honour--if that were needed. But pray
tell me what honour can there be as against
rebels--against people that deny God Himself--
perfect unbelievers! Brutes. It is horrible to
think of."
During this tirade Razumov, facing the General,
had nodded slightly twice. Prince K---,
standing on one side with his grand air,
murmured, casting up his eyes--
"_Helas!_"
Then lowering his glance and with great decision
declared--
"This young man, General, is perfectly fit to
apprehend the bearing of your memorable words."
The General's whole expression changed from dull
resentment to perfect urbanity.
"I would ask now, Mr. Razumov," he said, "to
return to his home. Note that I don't ask Mr.
Razumov whether he has justified his absence to
his guest. No doubt he did this sufficiently.
But I don't ask. Mr. Razumov inspires
confidence. It is a great gift. I only suggest
that a more prolonged absence might awaken the
criminal's suspicions and induce him perhaps to
change his plans."
He rose and with a scrupulous courtesy escorted
his visitors to the ante-room encumbered with
flower-pots.
Razumov parted with the Prince at the corner of
a street. In the carriage he had listened to
speeches where natural sentiment struggled with
caution. Evidently the Prince was afraid of
encouraging any hopes of future intercourse.
But there was a touch of tenderness in the voice
uttering in the dark the guarded general phrases
of goodwill. And the Prince too said--
"I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Razumov."
"They all, it seems, have confidence in me,"
thought Razumov dully. He had an indulgent
contempt for the man sitting shoulder to
shoulder with him in the confined space.
Probably he was afraid of scenes with his wife.
She was said to be proud and violent.
It seemed to him bizarre that secrecy should
play such a large part in the comfort and safety
of lives. But he wanted to put the Prince's
mind at ease; and with a proper amount of
emphasis he said that, being conscious of some
small abilities and confident in his power of
work, he trusted his future to his own
exertions. He expressed his gratitude for the
helping hand. Such dangerous situations did not
occur twice in the course of one life--he added.
"And you have met this one with a firmness of
mind and correctness of feeling which give me a
high idea of your worth," the Prince said
solemnly. "You have now only to persevere--to
persevere."
On getting out on the pavement Razumov saw an
ungloved hand extended to him through the
lowered window of the brougham. It detained his
own in its grasp for a moment, while the light
of a street lamp fell upon the Prince's long
face and old-fashioned grey whiskers.
"I hope you are perfectly reassured now as to
the consequences. . . "
"After what your Excellency has condescended to
do for me, I can only rely on my conscience."
"_Adieu_," said the whiskered head with feeling.
Razumov bowed. The brougham glided away with a
slight swish in the snow--he was alone on the
edge of the pavement.
He said to himself that there was nothing to
think about, and began walking towards his home.
He walked quietly. It was a common experience
to walk thus home to bed after an evening spent
somewhere with his fellows or in the cheaper
seats of a theatre. After he had gone a little
way the familiarity of things got hold of him.
Nothing was changed. There was the familiar
corner; and when he turned it he saw the
familiar dim light of the provision shop kept by
a German woman. There were loaves of stale
bread, bunches of onions and strings of sausages
behind the small window-panes. They were
closing it. The sickly lame fellow whom he knew
so well by sight staggered out into the snow
embracing a large shutter.
Nothing would change. There was the familiar
gateway yawning black with feeble glimmers
marking the arches of the different staircases.
The sense of life's continuity depended on
trifling bodily impressions. The trivialities
of daily existence were an armour for the soul.
And this thought reinforced the inward quietness
of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs
familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand
on the familiar clammy banister. The
exceptional could not prevail against the
material contacts which make one day resemble
another. To-morrow would be like yesterday.
It was only on the stage that the unusual was
outwardly acknowledged.
"I suppose," thought Razumov, "that if I had
made up my mind to blow out my brains on the
landing I would be going up these stairs as
quietly as I am doing it now. What's a man to
do? What must be must be. Extraordinary things
do happen. But when they have happened they are
done with. Thus, too, when the mind is made up.
That question is done with. And the daily
concerns, the familiarities of our thought
swallow it up--and the life goes on as before
with its mysterious and secret sides quite out
of sight, as they should be. Life is a public
thing."
Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out;
entered very quietly and bolted the door behind
him carefully.
He thought, "He hears me," and after bolting the
door he stood still holding his breath. There
was not a sound. He crossed the bare outer
room, stepping deliberately in the darkness.
Entering the other, he felt all over his table
for the matchbox. The silence, but for the
groping of his hand, was profound. Could the
fellow be sleeping so soundly?
He struck a light and looked at the bed. Haldin
was lying on his back as before, only both his
hands were under his head. His eyes were open.
He stared at the ceiling.
Razumov held the match up. He saw the clear-cut
features, the firm chin, the white forehead and
the topknot of fair hair against the white
pillow. There he was, lying flat on his back.
Razumov thought suddenly, "I have walked over
his chest."
He continued to stare till the match burnt
itself out; then struck another and lit the lamp
in silence without looking towards the bed any
more. He had turned his back on it and was
hanging his coat on a peg when he heard Haldin
sigh profoundly, then ask in a tired voice--
"Well! And what have you arranged?"
The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad
to put his hands against the wall. A diabolical
impulse to say, "I have given you up to the
police," frightened him exceedingly. But he did
not say that. He said, without turning round,
in a muffled voice--
"It's done."
Again he heard Haldin sigh. He walked to the
table, sat down with the lamp before him, and
only then looked towards the bed.
In the distant corner of the large room far away
from the lamp, which was small and provided with
a very thick china shade, Haldin appeared like a
dark and elongated shape--rigid with the
immobility of death. This body seemed to have
less substance than its own phantom walked over
by Razumov in the street white with snow. It
was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent
reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion.
Haldin was heard again.
"You must have had a walk--such a walk. . ." he
murmured deprecatingly.'' This weather. . . ."
Razumov answered with energy--
" Horrible walk. . . . A nightmare of a walk."
He shuddered audibly. Haldin sighed once more,
then--
"And so you have seen Ziemianitch--brother?"
"I've seen him."
Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with
the Prince, thought it prudent to add, "I had to
wait some time."
"A character--eh? It's extraordinary what a
sense of the necessity of freedom there is in
that man. And he has sayings too--simple, to
the point, such as only the people can invent in
their rough sagacity. A character that. . . ."
"I, you understand, haven't had much
opportunity. . . ." Razumov muttered through
his teeth.
Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling.
"You see, brother, I have been a good deal in
that house of late. I used to take there books--
leaflets. Not a few of the poor people who live
there can read. And, you see, the guests for
the feast of freedom must be sought for in
byways and hedges. The truth is, I have almost
lived in that house of late. I slept sometimes
in the stable. There is a stable. . . ."
"That's where I had my interview with
Ziemianitch," interrupted Razumov gently. A
mocking spirit entered into him and he added,
"It was satisfactory in a sense. I came away
from it much relieved."
"Ah! he's a fellow," went on Haldin, talking
slowly at the ceiling. "I came to know him in
that way, you see. For some weeks now, ever
since I resigned myself to do what had to be
done, I tried to isolate myself. I gave up my
rooms. What was the good of exposing a decent
widow woman to the risk of being worried out of
her mind by the police? I gave up seeing any of
our comrades. . . ."
Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper
and began to trace lines on it with a pencil.
"Upon my word," he thought angrily, "he seems to
have thought of everybody's safety but mine."
Haldin was talking on.
"This morning--ah! this morning--that was
different. How can I explain to you? Before
the deed was done I wandered at night and lay
hid in the day, thinking it out, and I felt
restful. Sleepless but restful. What was there
for me to torment myself about? But this
morning--after! Then it was that I became
restless. I could not have stopped in that big
house full of misery. The miserable of this
world can't give you peace. Then when that
silly caretaker began to shout, I said to
myself, 'There is a young man in this town head
and shoulders above common prejudices.'"
"Is he laughing at me?" .Razumov asked himself,
going on with his aimless drawing of triangles
and squares. And suddenly he thought: "My
behaviour must appear to him strange. Should he
take fright at my manner and rush off somewhere
I shall be undone completely. That infernal
General. . . ."
He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly
towards the bed with the shadowy figure extended
full length on it--so much more indistinct than
the one over whose breast he had walked without
faltering. Was this, too, a phantom?
The silence had lasted a long time. "He is no
longer here," was the thought against which
Razumov struggled desperately, quite frightened
at its absurdity. "He is already gone and this.
. .only. . . ."
He could resist no longer. He sprang to his
feet, saying aloud, "I am intolerably anxious,"
and in a few headlong strides stood by the side
of the bed. His hand fell lightly on Haldin's
shoulder, and directly he felt its reality he
was beset by an insane temptation to grip that
exposed throat and squeeze the breath out of
that body, lest it should escape his custody,
leaving only a phantom behind.
Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed
eyes moving a little gazed upwards at Razumov
with wistful gratitude for this manifestation of
feeling.
Razumov turned away and strode up and down the
room. "It would have been possibly a kindness,"
he muttered to himself, and was appalled by the
nature of that apology for a murderous intention
his mind had found somewhere within him. And
all the same he could not give it up. He became
lucid about it. "What can he expect?" he
thought. "The halter--in the end. And I. . . ."
This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice.
"Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body,
but they cannot exile my soul from this world.
I tell you what--I believe in this world so much
that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than
as a very long life. That is perhaps the reason
I am so ready to die."
"H'm," muttered Razumov, and biting his lower
lip he continued to walk up and down and to
carry on his strange argument.
Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it
would be an act of kindness. The question,
however, was not how to be kind, but how to be
firm. He was a slippery customer
"I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this
world of ours," he said with force. "I too,
while I live. . . . But you seem determined to
haunt it. You can't seriously. . . mean"
The voice of the motionless Haldin began--
"Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought
which quickens the world, the destroyers of
souls which aspire to perfection of human
dignity, they shall be haunted. As to the
destroyers of my mere body, I have forgiven them
beforehand."
Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at
the same time he was observing his own
sensations. He was vexed with himself for
attaching so much importance to what Haldin said.
"The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this
opinion did not mollify him towards Haldin. It
was a particularly impudent form of lunacy--and
when it got loose in the sphere of public life
of a country, it was obviously the duty of every
good citizen. . . .
This train of thought broke off short there and
was succeeded by a paroxysm of silent hatred
towards Haldin, so intense that Razumov hastened
to speak at random.
"Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very
well represent it to myself. . . . I imagine
it, however, as something quiet and dull. There
would be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The
element of time would be wanting."
He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin
turned over on his side and looked on intently.
Razumov got frightened at this movement. A
slippery customer this fellow with a phantom.
It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--
"And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive
secret places in Eternity? Impossible. Whereas
life is full of them. There are secrets of
birth, for instance. One carries them on to the
grave. There is something comical. . . but
never mind. And there are secret motives of
conduct. A man's most open actions have a
secret side to them. That is interesting and so
unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a
room for a walk. Nothing more trivial in
appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He
comes back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute,
taken particular notice of the snow on the
ground--and behold he is no longer the same man.
The most unlikely things have a secret power
over one's thoughts--the grey whiskers of a
particular person--the goggle eyes of another."
Razumov's forehead was moist. He took a turn or
two in the room, his head low and smiling to
himself viciously.
"Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle
eyes and grey whiskers? Excuse me. You seem to
think I must be crazy to talk in this vein at
such a time. But I am not talking lightly. I
have seen instances. It has happened to me once
to be talking to a man whose fate was affected
by physical facts of that kind. And the man did
not know it. Of course, it was a case of
conscience, but the material facts such as these
brought about the solution. . . . And you tell
me, Victor Victorovitch, not to be anxious!
Why! I am responsible for you," Razumov almost
shrieked.
He avoided with difficulty a burst of
Mephistophelian laughter. Haldin, very pale,
raised himself on his elbow.
"And the surprises of life," went on Razumov,
after glancing at the other uneasily. "Just
consider their astonishing nature. A mysterious
impulse induces you to come here. I don't say
you have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain
point of view you could not have done better.
You might have gone to a man with affections and
family ties. You have such ties yourself. As
to me, you know I have been brought up in an
educational institute where they did not give us
enough to eat. To talk of affection in such a
connexion--you perceive yourself. . . . As to
ties, the only ties I have in the world are
social. I must get acknowledged in some way
before I can act at all. I sit here working. .
. . And don't you think I am working for
progress too? I've got to find my own ideas of
the true way. . . . Pardon me," continued
Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short,
throaty laugh, "but I haven't inherited a
revolutionary inspiration together with a
resemblance from an uncle."
He looked again at his watch and noticed with
sickening disgust that there were yet a good
many minutes to midnight. He tore watch and
chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the
table well in the circle of bright lamplight.
Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir.
Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude. "What
move is he meditating over so quietly?" he
thought. "He must be prevented. I must keep on
talking to him."
He raised his voice.
"You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I
don't know what--to no end of people. I am just
a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a
mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who
had never heard a word of warm affection or
praise in his life would think on matters on
which you would think first with or against your
class, your domestic tradition--your fireside
prejudices?. . . Did you ever consider how a
man like that would feel? I have no domestic
tradition. I have nothing to think against. My
tradition is historical. What have I to look
back to but that national past from which you
gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I
to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a
better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has
to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts?
You come from your province, but all this land
is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall
be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of
hero--a political saint. But I beg to be
excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a
worker. And what can you people do by
scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On
this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I
tell you," he cried, in a vibrating, subdued
voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed,
"that what it needs is not a lot of haunting
phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!"
Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him
off in horror.
"I understand it all now," he exclaimed, with
awestruck dismay. "I understand--at last."
Razumov staggered back against the table. His
forehead broke out in perspiration while a cold
shudder ran down his spine.
"What have I been saying?" he asked himself.
"Have I let him slip through my fingers after
all?"
"He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and
instead of a reassuring smile only achieved an
uncertain grimace.
" What will you have?" he began in a
conciliating voice which got steady after the
first trembling word or two. "What will you
have? Consider--a man of studious, retired
habits--and suddenly like this. . . . I am not
practised in talking delicately. But. . . ."
He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him
again.
"What were we to do together till midnight? Sit
here opposite each other and think of your--your-
shambles? "
Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude. He
bowed his head; his hands hung between his
knees. His voice was low and pained but calm.
"I see now how it is, Razumov--brother. You are
a magnanimous soul, but my action is abhorrent
to you--alas. . . ."
Razumov stared. From fright he had set his
teeth so hard that his whole face ached. It was
impossible for him to make a sound.
"And even my person, too, is loathsome to you
perhaps," Haldin added mournfully, after a short
pause, looking up for a moment, then fixing his
gaze on the floor. "For indeed, unless one. . .
."
He broke off evidently waiting for a word.
Razumov remained silent. Haldin nodded his head
dejectedly twice.
"Of course. Of course," he murmured. . . .
"Ah! weary work!"
He remained perfectly still for a moment, then
made Razumov's leaden heart strike a ponderous
blow by springing up briskly.
"So be it," he cried sadly in a low, distinct
tone. "Farewell then."
Razumov started forward, but the sight of
Haldin's raised hand checked him before he could
get away from the table. He leaned on it
heavily, listening to the faint sounds of some
town clock tolling the hour. Haldin, already at
the door, tall and straight as an arrow, with
his pale face and a hand raised attentively,
might have posed for the statue of a daring
youth listening to an inner voice. Razumov
mechanically glanced down at his watch. When he
looked towards the door again Haldin had
vanished. There was a faint rustling in the
outer room, the feeble click of a bolt drawn
back lightly. He was gone--almost as noiseless
as a vision.
Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted,
voiceless lips. The outer door stood open.
Staggering out on the landing, he leaned far
over the banister. Gazing down into the deep
black shaft with a tiny glimmering flame at the
bottom, he traced by ear the rapid spiral
descent of somebody running down the stairs on
tiptoe. It was a light, swift, pattering sound,
which sank away from him into the depths: a
fleeting shadow passed over the glimmer--a wink
of the tiny flame. Then stillness.
Razumov hung over, breathing the cold raw air
tainted by the evil smells of the unclean
staircase. All quiet.
He went back into his room slowly, shutting the
doors after him. The peaceful steady light of
his reading-lamp shone on the watch. Razumov
stood looking down at the little white dial. It
wanted yet three minutes to midnight. He took
the watch into his hand fumblingly.
"Slow," he muttered, and a strange fit of
nervelessness came over him. His knees shook,
the watch and chain slipped through his fingers
in an instant and fell on the floor. He was so
startled that he nearly fell himself. When at
last he regained enough confidence in his limbs
to stoop for it he held it to his ear at once.
After a while he growled--
"Stopped," and paused for quite a long time
before he muttered sourly--
"It's done. . . . And now to work."
He sat down, reached haphazard for a book,
opened it in middle and began to read; but after
going conscientiously over two lines he lost his
hold on the print completely and did not try to
regain it. He thought--
"There was to a certainty a police agent of some
sort watching the house across the street."
He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway,
goggle-eyed, muffled up in a cloak to the nose
and with a General's plumed, cocked hat on his
head. This absurdity made him start in the
chair convulsively. He literally had to shake
his head violently to get rid of it. The man
would be disguised perhaps as a peasant. . . a
beggar. . . . Perhaps he would be just buttoned
up in a dark overcoat and carrying a loaded
stick--a shifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw
onions and spirits.
This evocation brought on positive nausea. "Why
do I want to bother about this?" thought
Razumov with disgust. "Am I a gendarme?
Moreover, it is done."
He got up in great agitation. It was not done.
Not yet. Not till half-past twelve. And the
watch had stopped. This reduced him to despair.
Impossible to know the time! The landlady and
all the people across the landing were asleep.
How could he go and. . . . God knows what they
would imagine, or how much they would guess. He
dared not go into the streets to find out. "I
am a suspect now. There's no use shirking that
fact," he said to himself bitterly. If Haldin
from some cause or another gave them the slip
and failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the
police would be invading his lodging. And if he
were not in he could never clear himself.
Never. Razumov looked wildly about as if for
some means of seizing upon time which seemed to
have escaped him altogether. He had never, as
far as he could remember, heard the striking of
that town clock in his rooms before this night.
And he was not even sure now whether he had
heard it really on this night.
He went to the window and stood there with
slightly bent head on the watch for the faint
sound. 'I will stay here till I hear
something," he said to himself. He stood still,
his ear turned to the panes. An atrocious
aching numbness with shooting pains in his back
and legs tortured him. He did not budge. His
mind hovered on the borders of delirium. He
heard himself suddenly saying, "I confess," as a
person might do on the rack. "I am on the
rack," he thought. He felt ready to swoon. The
faint deep boom of the distant clock seemed to
explode in his head--he heard it so clearly. . .
. One!
If Haldin had not turned up the police would
have been already here ransacking the house. No
sound reached him. This time it was done.
He dragged himself painfully to the table and
dropped into the chair. He flung the book away
and took a square sheet of paper. It was like
the pile of sheets covered with his neat minute
handwriting, only blank. He took a pen
brusquely and dipped it with a vague notion of
going on with the writing of his essay--but his
pen remained poised over the sheet. It hung
there for some time before it came down and
formed long scrawly letters.
Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began
to write. When he wrote a large hand his neat
writing lost its character altogether--became
unsteady, almost childish. He wrote five lines
one under the other.
History not Theory.
Patriotism not Internationalism.
Evolution not Revolution.
Direction not Destruction.
Unity not Disruption.
He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed
to the bed and remained fixed there for a good
many minutes, while his right hand groped all
over the table for the penknife.
He rose at last, and walking up with measured
steps stabbed the paper with the penknife to the
lath and plaster wall at the head of the bed.
This done he stepped back a pace and flourished
his hand with a glance round the room.
After that he never looked again at the bed. He
took his big cloak down from its peg and,
wrapping himself up closely, went to lie down on
the hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of
his room. A leaden sleep closed his eyelids at
once. Several times that night he woke up
shivering from a dream of walking through drifts
of snow in a Russia where he was as completely
alone as any betrayed autocrat could be; an
immense, wintry Russia which, somehow, his view
could embrace in all its enormous expanse as if
it were a map. But after each shuddering start
his heavy eyelids fell over his glazed eyes and
he slept again.
